Alibaba opens Qwen app to outside partners with China Eastern Airlines tie-up

SCMP Tech / 4/23/2026

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Key Points

  • Alibaba has opened its Qwen chatbot app to outside partners, expanding access beyond internal use.
  • The company is partnering with China Eastern Airlines as an initial tie-up to help extend the app’s capabilities in real-world deployments.
  • Alibaba said it plans to add more partnerships to broaden the “agentic” (action-oriented) features of its flagship consumer chatbot app.
  • The move signals a shift toward ecosystem-based distribution of AI capabilities, enabling third parties to integrate and build on Qwen.
Alibaba Group Holding has struck its first external partnership for its flagship consumer artificial intelligence app, linking it with China Eastern Airlines in a move that pushes its agentic capabilities beyond the company’s own ecosystem and into real-world services. The company said the fresh collaboration allowed users of the Qwen app to manage the full flight booking process – from search and ticket purchase to seat selection and check-in – within a single natural-language chat interface....

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