Alibaba's Qwen to power Apple Intelligence in China from iOS 27.3

Apple has picked Alibaba's Qwen foundation models to run Apple Intelligence in mainland China. The deal covers Siri's web-knowledge answers, Writing Tools and camera-based Visual Intelligence. Testing starts in the iOS developer beta on November 4, and the public rollout comes with iOS 27.3 in December.

Both companies say user queries will not be used for training. Alibaba shares rose about 6% on the announcement. Coverage calls it the first time an international device maker has adopted a domestic Chinese model as the core AI engine of its operating system.

The arrangement mirrors how Apple works elsewhere: a regional model partner for market-specific AI, wrapped in Apple's own orchestration and privacy layer. For Alibaba it is a major distribution win against Baidu, DeepSeek and ByteDance in the Chinese market. For Apple, it finally unblocks Apple Intelligence in its second-largest market after a long regulatory delay.

Things to watch: how Beijing's new frontier-AI export controls (Mofcom Announcement No. 48) and US scrutiny of Chinese models affect the partnership, and whether the beta shows any quality gap between Qwen-backed features and Apple's offerings in other regions.