- Alibaba will unveil its first Qwen AI glasses at the upcoming 2026 Mobile World Congress (MWC), with pre-orders opening on March 2.
- Alibaba's 2026 hardware lineup also includes AI earbuds and a smart ring, with these devices slated for global market release.
Alibaba is planning to launch a series of wearable devices powered by its AI assistant Qwen to capture the next-generation AI interaction gateway beyond smartphones.
The Chinese e-commerce giant will unveil its first Qwen AI glasses at the upcoming 2026 Mobile World Congress (MWC), with pre-orders set to open on March 2, according to a Friday report by local media outlet 36Kr.
Insiders revealed that Alibaba's 2026 hardware lineup will also include AI earbuds and smart rings, with these devices targeting global markets.
Existing "one-sentence ordering" features on the Qwen App — such as food delivery and ride-hailing — will be seamlessly integrated into these new terminal devices, per 36Kr.
The move aims to extend Alibaba's vast service ecosystem beyond smartphone screens into the physical world, continuing the company's recent consumer AI strategy realignment.
In December 2025, Alibaba established the Qwen Consumer Business Group led by vice president Wu Jia, targeting to develop Qwen into a super app spanning glasses, PCs, and automobiles.
Since its public beta launch last November, the Qwen App has experienced rapid growth, surpassing 10 million downloads within its first week.
To support the deployment of hardware, Alibaba has also optimized its underlying technology.
Earlier this month, Alibaba open-sourced the Qwen3.5-Plus large model, specifically optimized for hardware devices. This model not only significantly reduces graphics memory consumption but also features notably lower API call costs compared to competitors.
Currently, global tech giants are racing into the consumer AI hardware arena.
Meta Platforms is building a wearable ecosystem around its Ray-Ban smart glasses while secretly developing hardware like AI earbuds, neural wristbands, and smartwatches.
OpenAI and Alibaba's domestic competitor ByteDance are also actively preparing their own AI hardware products.
OpenAI was recently reported to have assembled a hardware team exceeding 2,000 members, planning to launch multiple consumer-grade hardware devices between late 2026 and 2027.
The company's product lineup includes smart glasses, voice recorders, wearable pins, and more.
Alibaba was among China's earliest companies to enter consumer hardware. In 2025, its Quark team launched AI glasses, while the DingTalk team released the AI voice recorder DingTalk A1.
Separately, according to another domestic media outlet Lanjinger, both the Quark AI glasses and Qwen AI glasses were developed by the Quark glasses team.
They were created by the same team using identical algorithms and hardware/software support. However, subsequent new series will align with the global brand strategy and adopt the Qwen branding, according to Lanjinger.
