Alibaba's Qwen3.8 Max nears Claude Opus 4.8, but Kimi K3 still leads on value

Alibaba's new Qwen3.8 Max scores 56 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, up 10 points from Qwen3.7 Max's 46, putting it close to Claude Opus 4.8. Moonshot's Kimi K3 still scores higher overall while costing about 25% less.

Why it matters: The jump shows Chinese labs closing the capability gap with US frontier models faster than in prior generations, while Kimi K3 leading on both score and price underscores how competitive China's open-weight ecosystem has become on cost-efficiency, not just raw benchmark performance.