Promotion: Qwen and GMI Cloud offer a free week of Qwen3.8 Max, Qwen3.8 Flash and Wan3.0
A week of free access to Qwen3.8-Max, Qwen3.8-Flash, and Wan3.0 on @gmi_cloudis live. Explore what you can build with us now. 馃檶
Context
This is a marketing offer, not a model launch, but it gives developers a no cost way to try Alibaba's latest text and video models through an OpenAI compatible API for a limited time.
Qwen is Alibaba's family of AI models, and Wan is its video generation model line. GMI Cloud is a GPU cloud company that also sells access to models through an API, according to RuntimeWire. Alibaba's Qwen account announced the free week late on October 8 US Eastern time.
Deep dive
Alibaba's Qwen account posted that a week of free access to Qwen3.8 Max, Qwen3.8 Flash and Wan3.0 is live on GMI Cloud, inviting developers to build with the models. It is a promotion by Alibaba and GMI Cloud, and the post does not include new benchmarks or capability claims.
GMI Cloud's campaign page says usage of the three models is free during the window and that the offer is aimed at developers. To qualify, users need at least $10 in their GMI Cloud balance. GMI says that money is not spent on the free models and stays available for other use on its platform, so the trial requires a small deposit rather than being free with no strings.
According to RuntimeWire, GMI's page presents Qwen3.8 Max for long context work, Qwen3.8 Flash for workloads that need low latency, and Wan3.0 for video generation, and offers the models through an OpenAI compatible API. RuntimeWire notes those descriptions come from GMI and that the promotion does not establish independent performance results.
GMI also runs a separate enterprise program with Alibaba through November 5, offering credit grants of up to $10,000 per organization for teams that expect production volume, according to its page.
What to expect next
Watch for the exact end date of the free window, since GMI's page advertises seven days while at least one deal tracker reported an extension with higher rate limits, so the current terms on GMI's page are the ones to trust.
Also watch whether developers who try the models keep using them after the promotion ends. That is the real test of whether free trials like this one win Alibaba and GMI lasting customers against rival model providers.