Ecovacs and Alibaba Cloud Strike Full-Stack AI Deal; Deebot Vacuums Tap Qwen for Voice Control

On Sept. 28, 2025, Chinese home-robot maker Ecovacs reached a full-stack AI partnership with Alibaba Cloud that spans compute, on-device model deployment and vision-language research, with Deebot robot vacuums now connected to Alibaba’s Qwen models for direct voice control, the companies said. Under the plan, Ecovacs will also build vertical large models and a unified agent platform on Qwen to improve internal efficiency.

The tie-up targets embodied intelligence—AI systems that perceive and act in the physical world—covering model training and inference on the device, as well as VLM (vision-language model) co-development. Ecovacs said Deebot units employ different-size Qwen models (0.7B/1.5B/7B) for intent recognition and local command execution, while larger Qwen models handle multi-turn dialogue and more complex requests.

Beyond consumer features, Ecovacs plans to use Qwen 3 and its enterprise knowledge to build domain-specific models and agents across R&D, manufacturing, supply chain, sales and service, aiming to streamline collaboration. The two companies noted they have worked together since 2016.

Ecovacs, which says it has focused on floor-care for 27 years, claims the only fully integrated household service-robotics product line and supply chain globally. The firm has led China’s domestic market in robot-vacuum share for 10 consecutive years; overseas revenue accounts for over 42%, with products sold across the U.S., Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Southeast Asia, serving 38 million households worldwide.