Twitter/X

Alex OCheema says Qwen 3.8 27B weights will be released next week and will run…

Brief

Qwen 3.8 27B weights are said to be released next week, promising near‑GLM‑5.2 performance locally on a 36GB MacBook (~$4,000) at ~25 tokens/sec. The This Week in AI episode (2026‑08‑07) frames Alibaba’s Qwen3.8‑Max as close to Anthropic at much lower cost and discusses policy, open weights, and AI sovereignty.

Why it matters

Alex OCheema says Qwen 3.8 27B weights will be released next week and will run with near‑GLM‑5.2 level intelligence locally on a 36GB MacBook (~$4,000) at roughly 25 tokens/second.

Key details

  • This Week in AI (published 2026-08-07) reports Alibaba’s Qwen3.8‑Max trails only Anthropic’s best at a fraction of the cost; guests Eiso Kant, Alex OCheema, and Ape debate US competitiveness, the White House’s softening on blocking foreign open weights, and enterprise AI sovereignty.
Source evidence

Qwen 3.8 27B weights are coming out next week.

It's a big deal.

We are going to have close to GLM-5.2 level intelligence running locally on a 36GB MacBook ($4k) at ~25 tok/sec.

Watch this so you know what's coming. Great convo w/ @jason @Lons @eisokant @Ape

This Week in AI (@ThisWeeknAI)

Alibaba says their latest model, Qwen3.8-Max, trails only Anthropic’s best, at just a fraction of the cost. With the White House likely backing off threats to block foreign open weight models entirely, is there any way for the American frontier to keep pace? And will US open weight models ever catch up to their Chinese counterparts?

We asked Poolside’s CTO @EisoKant, EXO Labs co-founder @AlexOCheema, and Qloo founder @Ape to break down where the AI race currently stands.

Plus Hank Green thinks AI is addictive… Would you allow AI to monitor your baby overnight if it helped them sleep?… And Jason’s pitch for licensing companies to test out their autonomous driving systems.

0:00 Guest intros and open
7:36 Small vs. frontier models: a false choice?
10:03 Why Poolside thinks coding is the path to AGI
12:55 A first look at EXO's local.ai
16:24 The White House's open source pivot
20:21 Margins, compute, and "dirt to intelligence"
36:02 Jason's self-driving auction pitch
37:58 Hank Green's AI apology
38:45 Is AI addictive?
1:08:31 What does it mean for AI to be "privacy first"?
1:10:29 Enterprise AI sovereignty and "colonization"

This Week in AI Ep 25 is streaming now!
🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇

Video

— https://nitter.net/ThisWeeknAI/status/2085449888381222923#m