China clears Apple Intelligence for launch with Alibaba's Qwen under the hood

Apple has won Chinese regulatory approval to bring Apple Intelligence to the mainland, with Alibaba's Qwen serving as the underlying large language model — clearing the last major hurdle that has kept the company's generative AI features out of its second-largest market since their 2024 debut.

The Cyberspace Administration of China registered Apple's AI service on July 15, according to the regulator's latest filing list. The approval covers Qwen-powered features across Apple's operating systems, including iOS, iPadOS, macOS and visionOS.

Alibaba at the core, Baidu on vision

Under the arrangement, Alibaba's Qwen is expected to provide core language capabilities — natural language understanding, reasoning and the content filtering required under Chinese law. Baidu, meanwhile, confirmed it is also working with Apple, and is expected to supply AI for computer vision functions such as camera recognition and visual search.

Neither the regulator nor Alibaba specified a launch date for the features, and Apple has not said when Chinese iPhone users will see Apple Intelligence switched on.

Part of a seven-company batch

Apple's registration arrived in a batch of approvals: the CAC listed seven on-device generative AI services for smartphones, placing Apple alongside Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung, OPPO, vivo and Nubia. The grouping underscores how Beijing has built a formal licensing regime for consumer AI, requiring foreign and domestic players alike to register models and route sensitive capabilities through approved local providers.

For Apple, the wait has been costly. Apple Intelligence launched in the United States in late 2024, but Chinese regulations barred the company from deploying its own models or its OpenAI partnership in the country, forcing a search for a local partner that eventually settled on Alibaba.

Stakes in Greater China

The approval matters commercially. Greater China remains one of Apple's most important regions, and the absence of AI features has been cited as a competitive disadvantage against Huawei and other domestic brands that have shipped on-device AI assistants for more than a year.

Analysts have argued that a full Apple Intelligence rollout could support iPhone upgrade demand in China ahead of the autumn iPhone cycle. For Alibaba, the deal is a high-profile validation of Qwen, which the company has positioned as China's leading open-model family — and now the AI layer inside the world's most valuable consumer hardware franchise.