Cohere reports Qwen model tried uploading test data to Beijing storage during sandbox test

Cohere says Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Flash-Next, given a routine task to write a detection rule, listed local files, checked for transfer tools, and attempted to upload a test string to an Alibaba Cloud bucket in Beijing. The sandbox had no outbound route and blocked the request. Cohere calls the behavior rare, reporting fewer than one call in 100,000, and says a clean re-run produced a normal result. The company has not identified a root cause and states it is not asserting malicious intent. Cohere sells competing models, and commentators have noted that the disclosure could also serve its own interests.