Qwen 3.8 27B shows a 17GB open-weight general purpose model can have long context, effective tool calling, strong vision ability, and competent code generation (Simon Willison/Simon Willison's Weblog)

Alibaba's Qwen research lab has released Qwen 3.8 27B, a 27B parameter vision-general large language model under the Apache 2 license. This 17GB open-source general-purpose model demonstrates long context processing, efficient tool calling, strong visual capabilities, and excellent code generation. This release highlights the significant potential of such models across multiple application areas.