Alibaba's Tongyi DeepResearch Agent Achieves Performance Parity with Proprietary AI, Released Open-Source

Shanghai – Alibaba's Tongyi Lab has recently unveiled Tongyi DeepResearch, an advanced open-source AI agent designed for complex, long-horizon information-seeking tasks. This new model, built upon the foundation of Alibaba's Qwen series, has quickly garnered attention for its ability to rival the performance of leading proprietary deep research tools, including those from OpenAI and Anthropic. The release signifies a major stride in making sophisticated AI agent capabilities widely accessible.

The announcement generated significant buzz within the AI community, with AshutoshShrivastava stating in a tweet, "> This is the new Qwen model tongyi deepresearch. Qwen never fails to surprise." Tongyi DeepResearch, while distinct from the general Qwen models, leverages the underlying Qwen3-30B-A3B architecture, demonstrating Alibaba's continuous innovation in artificial intelligence. It is specifically engineered for web browsing, reasoning, and comprehensive information retrieval.

The agent features 30.5 billion total parameters, with an efficient sparse activation mechanism utilizing only 3.3 billion parameters per token. This design allows it to achieve state-of-the-art results across various agentic search benchmarks, including Humanity's Last Exam and BrowserComp. Notably, Tongyi DeepResearch claims to match or exceed the performance of its larger, proprietary counterparts in critical areas like case citation quality and key point accuracy.

Alibaba's decision to release Tongyi DeepResearch as fully open-source under an Apache 2.0 license on platforms like GitHub and Hugging Face is a strategic move to democratize access to advanced AI. This allows developers and enterprises to freely download, customize, and deploy the agent for commercial applications, fostering innovation and accelerating the development of next-generation AI solutions without restrictive licensing.

The new agent has already been integrated into Alibaba's ecosystem, enhancing applications such as the Amap maps app for multi-day trip planning and the Tongyi FaRui AI-powered legal research tool for improved case law retrieval. This practical deployment underscores the model's robustness and its immediate utility across diverse sectors. Alibaba's commitment to both foundational research and open-source contributions positions it as a significant force in the global AI landscape.