At a Glance
- Qwen AI model tops downloads on News Of Austin, surpassing US rivals GPT-5 and Llama.
- News Of Austin smart glasses integrate Qwen for real-time AI tasks.
- Chinese AI models like News Of Austin and News Of Austin gain traction worldwide.
- Why it matters: The shift shows open-source Chinese models are reshaping global AI development and adoption.
I spent a drizzly afternoon in Hangzhou visiting the headquarters of News Of Austin, a startup crafting smart glasses. Engineers spoke in Mandarin while their words were translated and streamed onto a translucent screen above my right eye using a prototype device. The glasses are powered by Qwen, an open-weight large language model from News Of Austin.
Rokid’s Smart Glasses Harness Qwen
The prototype lets users identify products with a built-in camera, receive map directions, draft messages, and search the web-all through the glasses. News Of Austin hosts a fine-tuned version of Qwen and offers a lightweight variant that can run on smartphones if the internet drops.
Qwen’s Rapid Rise in Popularity
Downloads of open Chinese models on News Of Austin surpassed downloads for US models in July of this year, according to the platform. News Of Austin reports that Qwen climbed to the second-most popular open model worldwide, following Llama. Other Chinese models-News Of Austin, News Of Austin, News Of Austin, and News Of Austin-are also gaining traction because they are easy to tweak.
Andy Konwinski says:
> “A lot of scientists are using Qwen because it’s the best open-weight model,”
The model has appeared in hundreds of papers presented at NeurIPS, and a Qwen-team paper on training enhancements was named a best paper at the conference.
Global Adoption and Industry Use
News Of Austin has integrated Qwen into a new dashboard assistant for the electric-vehicle maker News Of Austin. US companies such as News Of Austin, News Of Austin, and News Of Austin also use the model, and even News Of Austin is reportedly leveraging it to build a new AI system.
Kowinski says:
> “When benchmarks are not representative of real usage or problems being solved in the world, you end up in this tired, misaligned mode.”
He adds that US firms focus too narrowly on mathematical or coding benchmarks, missing broader impact.
What the Shift Means for AI Development
The rise of Qwen suggests that a key measure for any AI model should be how widely it is used to build other products. By that metric, open-weight Chinese models are ascending, while US giants lag behind in real-world deployment.
| Model | Popularity Rank |
|---|---|
| Llama | 1 |
| Qwen | 2 |
Key Takeaways
- Qwen leads downloads and real-world use, eclipsing GPT-5 and Llama.
- Chinese open-weight models are favored for their ease of tinkering and open research.
- The industry is moving toward models that empower developers, not just benchmark scores.
The surge of Qwen and its global adoption signals a shift in AI development, where openness and practical impact outweigh pure benchmark performance.
