Alibaba Drops Free ChatGPT Killer as Silicon Valley Panics

Nov 18, 2025

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Welcome back to 4IR. Here’s today’s lineup:

Alibaba drops free ChatGPT killer as Silicon Valley panics - China’s e-commerce giant launches Qwen app in public beta, completely free, with servers immediately crashing from demand while Western AI companies charge $20/month subscriptions
Peter Thiel and Michael Burry dump $1.2B in Nvidia bets - PayPal cofounder sells entire 537K-share stake while “Big Short” investor loads up on puts days before Wednesday’s make-or-break earnings, both calling it 1999 all over again
Japan’s Sakana AI hits $2.65B valuation betting against giant models - Former Google researchers raise $135M from CIA’s venture arm to build “self-evolving” AI that merges smaller models instead of training trillion-parameter monsters

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