Qwen 4 is the upcoming fourth-generation foundation model in Alibaba’s Qwen AI family. Alibaba publicly confirmed at its 2026 Apsara Conference that the model is currently being trained. The company has not yet released technical specifications, model weights, API access, pricing, benchmark results, or a launch date for Qwen 4. Its development forms part of Alibaba’s broader effort to advance foundation models capable of increasingly complex and long-horizon work. The Qwen team is also researching recursive self-improvement, in which models use empirical feedback to identify weaknesses, design experiments, evaluate results, and iteratively improve training processes. Alibaba demonstrated this approach with Qwen3.8-Max, which completed 33 automated optimization cycles during a month-long experiment and improved its Artificial Analysis score from 40 to 45. These experiments provide context for Alibaba’s model-development direction but do not establish specific Qwen 4 capabilities. Alibaba has additionally outlined Qwen 4.5 and Qwen 5 models that could eventually scale to between 5 trillion and 10 trillion parameters. Until Qwen 4 is released, its exact architecture, modalities, performance, deployment options, and licensing remain to be announced.