Qianwen to Release AI Glasses, Headphones, and Rings as Tech Giants Compete for New AI Entry Points | Exclusive from Intelligence Emergence

Text by | Qiu Xiaofen

Edited by | Su Jianxun

In the past month, after Qianwen generated 200 million yuan in orders with its "one - sentence order" feature, Alibaba hopes to extend this model beyond mobile screens to more forms of hardware.

According to an insider from Alibaba, as reported by "Intelligent Emergence", Alibaba's personal AI assistant, "Qianwen", will enter the AI hardware field. Its planned hardware forms in 2026 include AI glasses, AI headphones, and AI rings, which will be available for sale in the global market.

Among them, the Qianwen AI glasses will be launched at the upcoming 2026 Mobile World Congress (MWC) and pre - orders will start on March 2nd.

To further enhance the user experience of these terminal hardware devices, as "Intelligent Emergence" has learned, functions such as ordering takeaways and hailing taxis on the Qianwen APP will be seamlessly migrated to numerous future terminal devices.

Interestingly, it's not just Alibaba's Qianwen. Recently, global AI giants have been flocking to the consumer - grade AI hardware market.

After achieving initial success with the RayBan Meta AI glasses, Meta is secretly building a wearable hardware ecosystem centered around AI glasses. According to foreign media, the hardware devices secretly developed by Meta include AI headphones, neural wristbands, smartwatches, etc.

OpenAI has also recently been reported to have assembled a hardware team of over 2,000 people and plans to launch several consumer - grade hardware devices from the end of 2026 to 2027. The product line includes smart glasses, voice recorders, wearable brooches, etc.

In China, ByteDance's AI glasses and AI headphones are also in preparation. (For more details about ByteDance's AI hardware secrets, please refer to the previous report of "Intelligent Emergence": "Doubao Phone Makes a Comeback: From 'Being Surrounded' to 'Counter - Surrounding' | Exclusive Report from Intelligent Emergence")

Actually, in 2025, Alibaba had already dabbled in consumer - end hardware. The Quark team launched AI glasses, and the DingTalk team released the AI voice - recording product DingTalk A1. However, in the future, Alibaba's actions in consumer - end hardware will be more concentrated.

This is first reflected in the organizational structure. In December 2025, Alibaba merged the original Smart Information and Smart Connectivity Business Groups to establish the "Qianwen Consumer - End Business Group". This business group will be responsible for consumer - end businesses such as the Qianwen App, Quark, and AI hardware.

In addition to concentrating various forces on Qianwen, Alibaba has also made adjustments to the model suitable for the edge side. On February 16th, Alibaba open - sourced a new generation of large - scale model, Qianwen Qwen3.5 - Plus.

In terms of parameters, the new model not only reduces the deployed video memory usage by 60% but also increases the maximum inference throughput by up to 19 times.

In terms of cost, the API cost per million Tokens of Qwen3.5 - Plus is as low as 0.8 yuan, only 1/18 of Gemini 3 Pro. Video memory and cost are precisely the most concerned factors for edge - side devices.

For Alibaba, participating in the competition for consumer - end AI hardware entry points is not just about expanding a few new hardware products.

Alibaba has accumulated a large - scale national - level software ecosystem in the past. What Alibaba lacks is precisely an entry point like "Qianwen" to connect its vast ecosystem (Alipay, Gaode, Taobao, Hema, Fliggy, etc.).

This entry point can be an APP or more AI hardware that "could become an entry point". Universally wearable devices such as glasses, headphones, rings, and pendants that have been proven effective are undoubtedly the top choices.

Data may be another consideration.

Through AI hardware that can be worn all day long, AI giants including Alibaba can obtain a large amount of first - person, multi - modal real - world data. This data will also be beneficial for the iterative development of the Qianwen model in the future, forming a positive data flywheel.

Actually, Alibaba may have more advantages than other players in entering the AI hardware field.

In terms of the most crucial infrastructure, Alibaba, with its "Tongyunge", is almost an all - rounder. Alibaba not only has the largest open - source model family, Tongyi, but also has developed its self - developed AI chip, the T-Head "Zhenwu 810E", and the world's largest cloud - computing platform, Alibaba Cloud.

In terms of the software ecosystem, Alibaba also has various business forms such as payment, transportation, and shopping. Different intelligent agents may also be combined in the future.

As Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming previously said, the greatest potential of AI lies not in mobile screens but in how to take over the digital world.

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