Qwen, where's the small stuff? (1B/2B/4B)

A Reddit user notes that Qwen, a key player in the local LLM space, has consistently introduced impactful technologies like n-gram in Qwen-Next and the recent Qwen 3.8 27B. However, the user questions the lack of new small-scale models (1B/2B/4B) from Qwen since the 3.5 series, and rumors suggest Qwen 4 will also omit them. This trend is also observed with Google's Gemma series.

This report highlights a shift in Qwen's strategy, as it has not released new small-scale models (1B/2B/4B) since the 3.5 series, unlike its consistent introduction of larger, impactful technologies.