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Public story · 2026-03-04 · source-backed
Junyang Lin (tech lead who built Qwen from lab project to 600M+ downloads) and Yu Bowen (post-training head) resigned one day after Qwen 3.5 launched. Huibin (Qwen Code lead) had already left for Meta in January. The catalyst: Alibaba dismantled Lin's vertically-integrated R&D model, splitting the team into horizontal modules. Hao Zhou (ex-Google DeepMind Gemini) appointed as new lead. BABA shares dropped 5.3% intraday. Google is already recruiting ex-Qwen researchers. Despite turmoil, Qwen's MAU jumped from 31M to 203M in February. Simon Willison calls Qwen 3.5 "truly remarkable" but fears it may be "Qwen's swan song." (Bloomberg)
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Huibin works at Meta / Shared entities / Shared topic / What happened next
Linked by a graph relationship (Huibin works at Meta); both cover Alibaba, Google, Meta, Qwen; overlapping topics (code, download, qwen).
Yu Bowen works at Alibaba / Shared entities / Shared topic / What happened next
Linked by a graph relationship (Yu Bowen works at Alibaba); both cover Alibaba, Qwen, Simon Willison; overlapping topics (alibaba, bowen, call, qwen).
Simon Willison uses Claude Code / Shared entities / Shared topic / What happened next / Tension
Linked by a graph relationship (Simon Willison uses Claude Code); both cover Alibaba, Qwen, Simon Willison; overlapping topics (already, code).
Huibin works at Meta / Shared entities / What happened next
Linked by a graph relationship (Huibin works at Meta); both cover February, Google, Meta, Qwen; picks up the February thread on 2026-07-25.
Linked by a graph relationship (Huibin works at Meta); both cover Alibaba, Google, Meta, Qwen; picks up the Alibaba thread on 2026-05-01.
Huibin works at Meta / Shared entities / Same source domain / What happened next
Linked by a graph relationship (Huibin works at Meta); both cover Bloomberg, Google, Meta; reported by the same outlet (bloomberg.com).
Linked by a graph relationship (Huibin works at Meta); both cover Bloomberg, Google, Meta; reported by the same outlet (bloomberg.com).
Simon Willison uses Claude / Shared entities / Shared topic / What happened next
Linked by a graph relationship (Simon Willison uses Claude); both cover Alibaba, Google, Qwen; overlapping topics (alibaba, code).