On the afternoon of March 5, Omar Sanseviero, a key figure in Google DeepMind’s development team, publicly reached out to the Qwen team on X: “Qwen friends: if any of you want a new home to build great models and contribute to the open models ecosystem, please reach out! Lots of exciting things in the roadmap and so much to build ahead of us”.
https://x.com/osanseviero/status/2029362422851748094
On the same day, Alibaba Group approved the resignation application of Tongyi Lab‘s Junyang Lin(Justin Lin).
That morning, Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu (Wu Yongming) responded to Junyang Lin’s departure in an internal email. He stated that the company would continue to adhere to its open-source model strategy, sustain increased investments in AI research and development, and intensify efforts to attract top talent.
In the internal letter, Eddie Wu revealed that the team would subsequently be led by Alibaba Cloud CTO Zhou Jingren, noting that “Jingren will continue to lead Tongyi Lab in advancing subsequent work.”
According to the internal letter’s information, Alibaba Group will establish a foundation model support group, coordinated by Eddie Wu, Zhou Jingren, and Fan Yu to align group resources in support of foundation model construction.
This internal letter marks a provisional conclusion to the industry buzz surrounding the events of the past 48 hours.
Below is a timeline of this resignation incident:
On March 2, Junyang Lin posted on X (formerly Twitter) about the release of the Qwen 3.5 series small-sized open-source models, which received a like from Elon Musk.
On the afternoon of March 3, according to multiple Chinese media reports, following an internal meeting, Junyang Lin had a disagreement with management and left on the spot. That afternoon, he formally submitted his resignation to Alibaba. On the same day, Qwen’s post-training lead Yu Bowen also formally resigned. Earlier in January, Qwen Code lead Hui Binyuan had already resigned to join Meta.
At midnight on March 4, Junyang Lin posted a brief statement on X: “me stepping down. bye my beloved qwen.” Qwen team core contributor Chen Cheng, when reposting, indicated that he believed the departure was not Junyang Lin’s own choice.
https://x.com/JustinLin610/status/2028865835373359513
On the afternoon of March 4 around 1 p.m., Tongyi Lab urgently convened an all-hands meeting. Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu, Chief Talent Officer Jiang Fang, and Alibaba Cloud CTO Zhou Jingren attended, engaging in candid communication with Qwen team members.
During the meeting, represented by Qwen RL lead Dayiheng Liu, team members raised multiple questions to senior leadership regarding team splitting, new hires, model roadmap, resource investments, and other issues.
On the afternoon of March 4 around 2 p.m., Junyang Lin posted on his Moments indicating a need for rest and instructing the Qwen team to continue advancing work as originally planned.
On the morning of March 5, Eddie Wu issued the aforementioned internal email, formally announcing the approval of Junyang Lin’s resignation, with Zhou Jingren continuing to lead Tongyi Lab, and the establishment of a foundation model support group comprising Eddie Wu himself, Zhou Jingren, and Fan Yu to coordinate resources at the group level.
