In this riveting episode recorded in late December 2025, we dive deep into the seismic shift happening in the world of artificial intelligence. As we went to publish in January 2026, the landscape had already transformed dramatically - Alibaba's Qwen family of LLMs has skyrocketed to approximately 700 million downloads on Hugging Face, all while being released as open-source models under permissive licenses.

The numbers are staggering: in December 2025 alone, Qwen's downloads surpassed the combined single-month downloads of tech giants like Meta (Llama), DeepSeek, OpenAI, Mistral, Nvidia, Zhipu.AI, Moonshot, and MiniMax. This isn't just a story about one company's success - it's about a fundamental power shift in AI development.

Special guest Dr. Warren Jackson joins us as we explore how China's open-source approach is challenging US-dominated proprietary models like ChatGPT, creating unprecedented value for users worldwide. We predicted this competition would benefit AI users, and the data is already proving us right. The democratization of AI is accelerating, and the implications for developers, businesses, and everyday users are profound. Don't miss this timely analysis of the new global AI race where open-source is emerging as the unexpected champion.

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