Alibaba's AI is 10x faster, 90% cheaper

PLUS: OpenAI's full stack plan, AI nursing robots, and a developer's big coding pitfall

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Good morning, AI enthusiast.

Alibaba is making a major play in the open-source space with its new Qwen3-Next model. The company claims its latest AI is not only 10 times more powerful but also a staggering 90% less expensive to build than its predecessor.

The model's remarkable efficiency could lower the barrier for building advanced AI applications on consumer-grade hardware. With top-tier performance no longer limited to the most resource-intensive models, could this move from Alibaba truly democratize access to powerful AI?

In today’s AI recap:

  • Alibaba's ultra-efficient Qwen3 model

  • Foxconn’s AI nursing robot trials

  • The hidden limits of AI coding assistants

  • 8 trending AI Tools

Alibaba's 10x AI

The Recap: Alibaba's cloud unit just open-sourced its new Qwen3-Next AI model, which it claims is 10 times more powerful and costs 90% less to build than its predecessor.

Unpacked:

  • The model uses an ultra-sparse design that activates only 3 billion of its 80 billion parameters at a time, dramatically reducing computational costs.

  • Early benchmarks show it outperforming models from Google and Meta on graduate-level reasoning and long-context tasks.

  • This release is part of Alibaba's larger strategy to build a dominant open-source ecosystem, backed by a new $3.2 billion bond sale for AI infrastructure.

Bottom line: By making a powerful model so efficient, Alibaba is lowering the barrier for developers to build advanced AI applications on consumer-grade hardware. This move also heats up the global AI race, signaling that top-tier performance is no longer limited to the most resource-intensive models.

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The AI Robo-Nurse

The Recap: Electronics giant Foxconn, in partnership with NVIDIA and Kawasaki, is trialing ‘Nurabot,’ an AI nursing robot designed to address critical healthcare staffing shortages by handling repetitive tasks.

Unpacked:

  • The robot directly addresses a projected global shortage of 4.5 million nurses by 2030, a crisis fueled by high burnout rates and aging populations.

  • In hospital trials, Nurabot is already reducing the daily nursing workload by 20-30% by autonomously delivering medications, samples, and other supplies.

  • Its rapid 10-month development was possible because it was trained and tested in a virtual hospital, a digital twin built on NVIDIA's Omniverse platform.

Bottom line: Nurabot shows how AI automation can augment skilled professionals, not replace them, freeing up nurses to focus on complex patient care and decision-making. This signals a growing trend of physical AI moving into essential industries to solve labor shortages and improve operational efficiency.

AI Training

The Recap: In this video, I'm going to show you how to build an AI automation that's able to analyze the best performing live ads that your competitors are running on Facebook and Instagram. It's going to find the best ads, download the ad creative, and then spin that ad creative to promote your product or service offering.

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The 16x Coder

The Recap: A developer used OpenAI's updated Codex to complete an estimated 24 days of coding in just 12 hours for $20, but discovered a major catch: aggressive, unannounced usage limits that can halt work for days.

Unpacked:

  • The tool acted as a powerful force multiplier, enabling the completion of four projects—including UI redesigns and debugging—that would have normally taken weeks.

  • The major drawback was the sudden lockouts, which escalated from 33 minutes to 90 minutes, and ultimately to a full week-long ban without any prior warning.

  • This highlights a trade-off in the AI coding market, where premium tools like Cursor Ultra can cost upwards of $200 per month but promise more consistent, uninterrupted access for professional workflows.

Bottom line: Low-cost AI coding assistants offer massive productivity gains, but their hidden usage limits can make them unreliable for mission-critical projects. This experience signals a growing gap between casual use and the high-priced, dependable tools required for professional development.

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The Shortlist

OpenAI signed a memorandum of understanding with Microsoft, clearing the way for a new corporate structure to help fund its "full stack" strategy of building everything from custom chips to AI applications.

The FTC launched a formal inquiry into seven AI companies, including Meta, OpenAI, and Google, to investigate the potential negative impacts their companion chatbots may have on children and teens.

Quebec's Higher Education Council withdrew its major report on ethical AI in education after it was found to contain over 15 fabricated citations, which experts suspect were AI-generated hallucinations.

Ray Dalio warned that the rise of AI and humanoid robots will dramatically increase wealth inequality, predicting a future with a "limited number of winners" that will require a new "redistribution policy".

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Signing off,

David, Lucas, Mitchell — The Recap editorial team