Alibaba Launches Wan 2.1 AI Model and Acquires wan.video Domain, Advancing Its AI Strategy

Alibaba Launches Wan 2.1 AI Model and Acquires wan.video Domain, Advancing Its AI Strategy

Chinese tech giant Alibaba has officially launched its latest AI model, Wan 2.1, under the new brand domain wan.video. Reports indicate that this domain was registered on February 24, 2025, and is likely a recent acquisition by Alibaba. Following the acquisitions of QwenChat.com and Qwen.ai, this move further strengthens Alibaba’s branding strategy in the AI sector, highlighting the critical role of premium domains in corporate strategy and project promotion. It also reflects the growing opportunities in the domain investment market, driven by the rapid expansion of the AI industry.

Wan 2.1: Alibaba’s Next-Generation Video AI Model

Wan 2.1 is the latest open-source AI video generation model released by Alibaba Cloud, belonging to the Tongyi Wanxiang multimodal AI family. Officially launched on February 25, 2025, the model has quickly gained industry attention for its cutting-edge capabilities, including:

• Advanced video and image generation: Supports Text-to-Video (T2V), Image-to-Video (I2V), Video Editing, Text-to-Image (T2I), and Video-to-Audio (V2A) tasks.

• Diverse model architectures for different use cases:

• T2V-14B (14 billion parameters) – A high-resolution, dynamic, and realistic video generation model.

• T2V-1.3B (1.3 billion parameters) – A lightweight version that requires just 8.19GB VRAM, allowing it to run efficiently on consumer GPUs like Nvidia RTX 4090, generating a 5-second 480p video in only 4 minutes.

• I2V-14B – Specializes in transforming static images into complex dynamic scenes, supporting 720p and 480p resolutions.

• First AI video model supporting both Chinese and English, making it highly applicable for advertising, short video production, and creative content generation.

• Innovative architecture: Utilizes a 3D Causal Variational Autoencoder (VAE) and Diffusion Transformer (DiT) to significantly enhance video generation efficiency and quality.

• Industry-leading performance: Achieved an 86.22% overall score in the VBench benchmark, surpassing OpenAI’s Sora, especially excelling in motion realism, spatial relations, and multi-object interactions.

Alibaba’s Expanding AI Strategy

In recent years, Alibaba has been aggressively expanding its AI ecosystem, building a multimodal AI infrastructure covering language, vision, and audio technologies.

• 2023: Introduced its first Qwen (Tongyi Qianwen) language model.

• January 2025: Released Qwen 2.5-Max, outperforming DeepSeek-V3, GPT-4o, and Llama-3.1-405B in multiple benchmarks.

• 2025: Surpassed 40 million downloads for its open-source AI models, solidifying its position as a major force in the global AI ecosystem.

Alibaba has also announced a ¥380 billion ($52 billion) investment over the next three years to enhance cloud computing and AI infrastructure, further strengthening its dominance in AI technology.

Strategic Importance of the wan.video Domain Acquisition

The acquisition of wan.video aligns with Alibaba’s broader AI branding and market expansion strategy. Following the purchases of QwenChat.com and Qwen.ai, Alibaba is ensuring consistency in its AI branding while reinforcing its online presence.

Industry experts note that:

• Premium domains are crucial digital assets that enhance brand recognition and market positioning.

• The growing commercialization of AI has made short, memorable domain names a strategic advantage in the competitive tech landscape.

Looking Ahead: Accelerating AI Ecosystem Growth

The release of Wan 2.1 provides developers with a powerful AI tool and enables businesses to leverage cost-effective, high-efficiency content generation solutions. Alibaba has reaffirmed its commitment to open-source AI innovation and widespread adoption, driving technological advancements and industry transformation.

As AI continues to reshape the global technology landscape, Alibaba’s dual focus on AI development and brand strategy will further cement its leadership in the global AI sector.

About Alibaba Cloud

Alibaba Cloud is a global leader in cloud computing and artificial intelligence, dedicated to providing efficient and intelligent solutions for businesses, developers, and society. Its Model Scope AI community and open-source platform have become integral components of the global AI ecosystem.