Bill Lou

Cofounder @lit_trade - Prev founder @nestwalletxyz
SWE @ Bitgo, Bloomberg - UPenn CS

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

New York wants to ban AI from giving medical, legal, and engineering advice.

Translation: the industries charging you $500/hour don't want a $20/month competitor.

This isn't about safety. It's about protecting margins. I wonder who's lobbying

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

This simple tweet has 5 million impressions and most of English-speaking AI Twitter has no idea why. Let me explain, because this might be the biggest AI drama to come out of China so far this year.

Junyang Lin just quit as the lead of Qwen — Alibaba's AI model family. If you don't know Qwen, you should, because you're probably already using it without realizing. It's been downloaded 700 million times. For perspective, Meta's Llama — the model most people think of when they hear "open-source AI" — Qwen surpassed it months ago. If you use a coding tool, a chatbot, or anything open-source AI, there's a good chance it runs on Qwen under the hood.

This 32-year-old built all of that. Joined Alibaba at 25 straight out of Peking University, turned a nobody side project into the most used open-source AI in the world. And yesterday he posted "bye my beloved qwen" and walked away.

He wasn't the only one. Within hours his head of post-training resigned. His code lead had already left for Meta. Another key researcher announced their exit too. A colleague posted publicly: "I know leaving wasn't your choice." People are calling it "Qwover."

The cruel part — this happened the DAY AFTER the team shipped their best work ever. A release so good Elon Musk praised it by name. They gave the world their masterpiece and then got shown the door.

So what actually happened? Alibaba's management brought in a guy from Google's Gemini team, installed him above the existing team, and carved up Lin's org into corporate silos. Basically: thanks for building one of the most important AI projects on earth, but we need someone who thinks about daily active users now.

A researcher at DeepSeek put it perfectly: "Replace the excellent leader with a non-core person from Google Gemini, driven by DAU metrics. Don't be surprised when the innovation curve flattens."

This keeps happening because everyone is chasing numbers. Meta brought in outside execs → Yann LeCun left → Llama quality dropped. OpenAI went corporate → the safety team walked. Now Alibaba does the exact same thing. You'd think at some point these companies would realize — you can hire talent, but you can't hire soul.

Here's why this should matter to you even if you don't care about Alibaba drama: Qwen is fully open-source today. Anyone can use it, build on it, modify it. The people who fought to keep it that way just left.

If you're building on Qwen, save what you need now. Before "open" becomes a luxury the new regime decides it can't afford.

[Junyang Lin @JustinLin610]

me stepping down. bye my beloved qwen.

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

Kinda regret teaching my parents how to use AI...

It's gotten a lot harder to win arguments

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

I just used the "Import Memory" feature to migrate all my ChatGPT context to Claude in 2 clicks.

Getting blacklisted by the Pentagon got turned into a user acquisition moment

[Greg @GregFeingold]

Ready to make the switch?

https://t.co/foaJ4CKJmG

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

And ppl are saying there’s more new jobs than before because of AI

[jack @jack]

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company.

####

today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone.

first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay.

we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.

i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures.

a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers.

we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold.

to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward.

to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow.

jack

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

Everyone on my timeline now proclaiming that SWE job openings are booming. 🚀

Zoom out and see the first chart. We're not even close to recovering to 2022 levels. AI is just getting good enough to replacing jobs and roles but HR is slow to react.

There will be a wave of "hiring" for people to implement AI and then it's those people to see how fast they can replace their co-workers.

Short-term momentum can look exciting but we always need context to get the full story

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

@degennQuant @HyperliquidX You can with @lit_trade directly

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

Looks like @unitxyz @tradexyz has secured tickers for $NVDA and $GOLD in addition to $TSLA

Going to be an exciting time for HIP3 this coming week

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

Explore all HIP-3 markets and trade them live as they get launched

[Lit @lit_trade]

HIP-3 trading is live on Lit! 🔥

You can now trade the XYZ100 index by @unitxyz directly on https://t.co/BJY7HH2nvE

All future HIP-3 markets will instantly be tradable on Lit the second they hit Mainnet as part of our aggregation

[Lit @lit_trade]

HIP-3 trading is live on Lit! 🔥

You can now trade the XYZ100 index by @unitxyz directly on https://t.co/BJY7HH2nvE

All future HIP-3 markets will instantly be tradable on Lit the second they hit Mainnet as part of our aggregation

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

@HyperOddX @lit_trade exciting stuff!!

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

@ExaltedFoks try @lit_trade
the trading UX enhancements really do hit different

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

@standingmaltese @lit_trade love this :)

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

@daaniyaan Have you checked out @lit_trade
It makes previewing SL/TP super easy and setting up trades can all be drag-and-drop. Smoothest UX on any trading platform

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

Really interesting convos about HIP3s and some of the new possibilities it allows

[Lit @lit_trade]

https://t.co/24evDyG5cU

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

Want to long the price of Nvidia A100s?

Being able to trade compute resources is another exciting market that is enabled by HIP-3.

Now you can with Lit and Global Compute Index

[Lit @lit_trade]

Lit HIP-3 Spaces with @sedaprotocol & @computeindex

GPU PERPS ON HIP-3!
Hear from the team bringing gpu indices to @HyperliquidX and their oracle Seda

⏰ Tuesday Oct 14th, 10:00 EST
🎙️ https://t.co/vDVOdZ5Ll8

[Lit @lit_trade]

The first ever HIP-3 perp dex has just been deployed. And it's by @unitxyz!

Check what assets they have deployed here 👉 https://t.co/0DROZszkKI

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

@esprisi0 @hyenatrade @tradexyz @unitxyz @ventuals check out and trade all of these assets on @lit_trade

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

There's already a live HIP-3 DEX with the name "XYZ"!!

Their only prep XYZ100 is already trading at a price of $24.8k. Anyone have guesses on what this is.

Explore all HIP-3 markets live at: https://t.co/rnYxmm7B7Y

[Lit @lit_trade]

People are already deploying HIP-3 dexes on mainnet!

Lit now surfaces all Mainnet HIP-3 dexes live. The second they launch. Lookout for the "Mainnet" tag here 👉 https://t.co/wqtGaW2Ksc

Any guesses on who deployed the "xyz"? 🤔

[Bill Lou @BillLou95]

@JobbaTrades @HyperliquidX Allows perp markets to be created on anything (stocks, forex, indexes like SP500)