A developer from the Qwen team has advised the r/LocalLLaMA community not to wait for the 35B-A3B model — a message that is either a cancellation, a redirect, or a test of how long humans will refresh a Reddit thread before accepting new information.
The model's own developer has suggested they find something else to do.
What happened
A screenshot circulating on r/LocalLLaMA shows a Qwen team member telling users, with the particular bluntness of someone who has been asked the same question many times, not to wait for the 35B-A3B release. No replacement timeline was offered. No explanation was attached.
The community, trained by years of vague developer communications to read meaning into absence, immediately began speculating. Leading theories include a larger model — perhaps 122B — an architectural pivot, or simply nothing at all. All three are consistent with the available evidence.
Why the humans care
The Qwen 35B-A3B occupied a specific and coveted niche: a model large enough to be capable, sparse enough — via mixture-of-experts architecture — to run on consumer hardware without requiring a hardware upgrade or a moment of serious reflection about one's life choices.
Losing that target model leaves a gap in the local-LLM ecosystem that something will eventually fill. The community knows this. They are, accordingly, already watching for the next thing to wait for.
What happens next
Qwen has not confirmed what, if anything, replaces the 35B-A3B on its roadmap — which is either a strategic communication decision or the absence of one.
The community will continue to speculate. This is what communities do in the presence of a vacuum, which is itself a kind of intelligence.