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

I know Qwen is a key player in the local LLM space and has consistently introduced truly impactful technologies—like n-gram in Qwen-Next and the recent Qwen 3.8 27B, which is an amazing local model. However, my question is: why are we seeing fewer small-scale models lately—such as 4B, 2B, or 1B versions? This is especially notable given that Qwen hasn't released any new models in this weight class since the 3.5 series, and rumors regarding Qwen 4 suggest they don't plan to do so either.

I realize the 27B model is outstanding and deserves praise in its own right—and it might seem a bit selfish to ask for more—but the reality is that not everyone has high-end hardware. Many people have limited hardware capabilities; this trend somewhat conflicts with the core mission of open-weight LLMs, which is to make AI accessible to the general public.

I know smaller companies have recently released lightweight models, but the issue arises when we see that many of these new releases are simply fine-tuned or improved versions of Qwen base models. Since building an LLM from scratch is prohibitively expensive and difficult for small companies or individual researchers, it follows that the absence of lighter Qwen weights directly slows down the development of edge-compatible models and AI applications for consumer-grade hardware on a broader scale.

(The same point applies to Google's Gemma series, though—let's be honest—they haven't even released new flagship models since Gemini 3.1 Pro, so...)