Alibaba Group has significantly expanded its AI capabilities with the June 2025 launch of DeepResearch mode in its Quark application, representing the company's most ambitious agent-like effort to date.
Originally launched in 2016 as a web browser and later evolving into a cloud storage and search service, Quark underwent a major transformation in March 2025 when Alibaba rebranded it as an 'AI super assistant.' The June update introduces DeepResearch mode, which enhances the app's ability to handle complex queries and conduct thorough online research with direct reference linking.
The DeepResearch feature builds upon Quark's existing capabilities, which already include AI chatbot functionality, deep thinking mode, and task execution. According to the MIT Technology Review, this latest development positions Quark as a formidable competitor in the emerging market for AI agents, challenging offerings like Butterfly Effect's Manus and similar technologies from other companies.
Alibaba's advancement comes amid its growing dominance in the open-source AI model space. The company's Qwen model series has achieved remarkable success, becoming one of the world's most widely adopted open-source AI model families with over 300 million downloads worldwide and more than 100,000 derivative models on Hugging Face. The Qwen series topped Hugging Face's open-source model rankings in 2024, outperforming competitors across multiple benchmarks.
The company is leveraging this AI prowess to pursue what industry observers describe as an 'all-in-one, super-app approach' that contrasts with more specialized vertical solutions from US companies. With Quark now serving nearly 150 million monthly active users worldwide, surpassing ByteDance's Doubao and DeepSeek, Alibaba appears well-positioned to capitalize on its substantial investment of 380 billion yuan ($52.5 billion) in cloud computing and AI infrastructure announced for the next three years.
As competition in China's AI agent space intensifies, Alibaba's integration of DeepResearch into Quark represents a strategic move to maintain its leadership position while delivering more sophisticated AI capabilities to its massive user base.