Alibaba makes AI video generation model free to use globally

Alibaba on Wednesday said that it has made its video generation artificial intelligence models free to use, further ramping up competition with rivals like OpenAI.

The Chinese giant said it is open sourcing four models that are part of its Wan2.1 series, the latest version of the company’s foundational AI model that can generate images and video from text and image inputs.

These models will be available via Alibaba Cloud’s Model Scope and Hugging Face, a huge repository of AI models. They will be accessible to academics, researchers and commercial institutions globally.

Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares closed nearly 5% higher.

Open-source AI tech has been thrown into the spotlight since Chinese firm DeepSeek rattled global markets in January, after claiming its artificial intelligence model was trained at a fraction of the cost of leading AI players and on less-advanced Nvidia chips.

DeepSeek’s model is open source, like Alibaba’s, meaning it can be downloaded and modified by others.

Open source differs from proprietary models such as those created by OpenAI and do not produce revenue for companies. Open sourcing a technology serves a number of purposes, including driving innovation and building a community around a product.

A debate is currently swirling about whether AI models will become commoditized.

Chinese firms in particular have been pushing forward with open source models, Alibaba’s and DeepSeek’s now among the most popular used globally. Alibaba published its first open source model in August 2023, while Meta is leading the open source charge with its Llama models in the U.S.

Alibaba’s stock has been on a tear this year, with the Hong Kong listing up 66% in 2025 to date due to factors including the company’s improved financial performance, its perception as one of the key AI players in China and recent signals of further support from Chinese president Xi Jinping for the domestic private sector.