Alibaba's Odds as Best Chinese AI Fall to 10% After Two Exits
2 venues9%Down2 ptsfrom 10% when published, 2 days ago
- Traders are backing away from Alibaba after two reported executive exits, while Xiaomi stays the clear favorite to finish October on top.
- Neither Rong Yu nor Zhang Yingya leads the Qwen text models that decide the arena.ai ranking.
Alibaba's Odds of Best Chinese AI Company at End of October Fall to 10%
Alibaba's chances in the Polymarket market on the best Chinese AI company at the end of October fell about 9 points in three days to 10% on Oct. 20, 2026, after reports that Rong Yu, head of DAMO Academy's AI for Science, and Zhang Yingya, head of the Tongyi Wanxiang video model, left. Neither runs Qwen, the text models that determine the arena.ai ranking that settles the market.
Alibaba had been at 19% three days earlier, and 10% is the lowest price of the period. Xiaomi remains the clear favorite at roughly 60-64%. We could not establish that the departures caused the drop. The connection rests on timing, not documented trader reasoning.
Why the Rong Yu and Zhang Yingya Exits May Not Matter for Alibaba's Qwen Ranking
The two departures differ in how well they are confirmed. Rong Yu reportedly left on Oct. 15 to found a new company, 格致涌现, according to Sina Finance reporting. Zhang Yingya reportedly resigned around Oct. 14-16, and Alibaba had not confirmed her exit. Prediction.com first tracked the slide on Oct. 18, when Alibaba had fallen from 24% to 16%.
The market resolves on the arena.ai Text Arena Overall leaderboard, with style control off, at 12:00 PM ET on Oct. 31. Only a text model counts toward that result. Rong Yu's science unit and Zhang Yingya's video model are outside that scope. The sources found no Qwen ranking change during the window.
Alibaba's text work kept moving during the same week. A Qwen3.8 Flash model posted a throughput result of 685 tokens per second, and the company released the OpenGCUA computer-use agent stack on Oct. 15. Apple's Qwen partnership for China was reported approved the same day, and Alibaba opened Qwen to outside developers building for phones, PCs and smart glasses.
What Could Confirm or Reverse Alibaba's Odds Before Oct 31
The arena.ai Text Arena reading on Oct. 31 decides the market. Xiaomi is the leading Chinese entrant on that board, so Alibaba would need a Qwen text model that ranks above Xiaomi's within 11 days. Alibaba's flagship is Qwen3.8-Max, at 2.4 trillion parameters. Qwen 4 is still in training and has no confirmed release date.
Rivals are also active. DeepSeek shipped V4.1-Flash-1017 on Oct. 17 and leads open models on Code Arena WebDev. Code Arena is a separate leaderboard from the Text Arena that settles this market. Moonshot reportedly lost Chen Guangyu on Oct. 16, so Alibaba was not the only company with a talent exit that week.
Two signals would test the pricing. The first is an official Alibaba statement confirming or denying Zhang Yingya's departure. The second, which matters more, is a new Qwen text release or any movement on the Text Arena leaderboard. For the full field of outcomes, see the best Chinese AI company end of October market.
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The story so far: best Chinese AI Company end of October
1 update · Oct 18
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