# Qwen3 Next (80B-A3B)

> Efficiency-focused Qwen refresh that swaps standard attention for a DeltaNet-attention hybrid.

| Property | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Lab | Alibaba Cloud (China) |
| Released | 2025-09-09 |
| Decoder type | Sparse hybrid |
| Family | Hybrid MoE |
| Scale | 80B total, 3B active (3.8% active) |
| Context window | 262,144 tokens |
| Attention | 3:1 Gated DeltaNet and Gated Attention |
| Layer mix | 12 gated attention + 36 DeltaNet |
| KV cache / token (bf16) | 24 KiB (Very low) |
| License | Apache License 2.0 |

**Key detail:** Adds many more experts, a shared expert, native 262k context, and MTP for speculative decoding.

## Architecture concepts

- [Mixture of Experts (MoE)](https://llm-atlas-7or.pages.dev/concepts/moe.md): Many feed-forward experts, but a router sends each token to only a few of them.
- [Gated Attention (Gated attention)](https://llm-atlas-7or.pages.dev/concepts/gated-attention.md): A learned sigmoid gate scales the attention output before it re-enters the residual stream.
- [Hybrid Attention (Hybrid attention)](https://llm-atlas-7or.pages.dev/concepts/hybrid-attention.md): Mixes cheap linear-attention or state-space layers with a few full-attention layers.
- [Multi-Token Prediction (MTP)](https://llm-atlas-7or.pages.dev/concepts/mtp.md): Extra heads learn to predict several future tokens, and can draft tokens at inference.

## Benchmark (Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index)

- AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2: total 9.6 (Scientific 3.8)

## Links

- Architecture diagram: https://sebastianraschka.com/llm-architecture-gallery/images/architectures/qwen3-next-80b-a3b.webp
- View in article: https://magazine.sebastianraschka.com/p/the-big-llm-architecture-comparison#%C2%A7121-expert-size-and-number
- config.json: https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct/blob/main/config.json
- License: https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct/blob/main/LICENSE
- Source card (source of truth): https://sebastianraschka.com/llm-architecture-gallery/#card-qwen3-next-80b-a3b
- Web page: https://llm-atlas-7or.pages.dev/models/qwen3-next-80b-a3b/
- JSON: https://llm-atlas-7or.pages.dev/api/models/qwen3-next-80b-a3b.json

_Data from Sebastian Raschka's LLM Architecture Gallery (https://sebastianraschka.com/llm-architecture-gallery/). Synced 2026-11-04._