MiniMax
MiniMax is a Hong Kong-listed Chinese AI company and the maker of the open-weight MiniMax M-series models, the Hailuo video generator and the Talkie companion app. Founded in 2021 by ex-SenseTime researchers and backed by MiHoYo, Alibaba and Tencent, it competes at the open-weight frontier — its MiniMax M3 matches top proprietary models on key benchmarks at a fraction of the cost.
MiniMax is a Chinese AI company and one of the country’s “AI tigers,” best known in 2026 for the open-weight MiniMax M3 — a model that matches top proprietary systems on key coding benchmarks at a fraction of their cost — alongside the Hailuo video generator and the Talkie companion app. Founded in December 2021 by computer-vision researchers from SenseTime and seeded by Genshin Impact maker MiHoYo, it has since drawn backing from Alibaba and Tencent and, in January 2026, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, where its shares more than doubled on debut (CNBC, TechNode).
MiniMax’s strategy is the open-weight, low-cost frontier: rather than chase the absolute top of the board, it ships models that land within a fraction of a point of the proprietary leaders on benchmarks like SWE-bench Verified, then releases the weights and prices the API at roughly a tenth of what US labs charge. Combined with consumer hits (Hailuo, Talkie) and a public listing, that has made it one of the most commercially visible of China’s new AI companies.
Quick facts
| Company | MiniMax (MiniMax Group) |
| Founded | December 2021, by ex-SenseTime researchers |
| Headquarters | Shanghai, China |
| Status | Public — Hong Kong Stock Exchange (listed January 2026) |
| Valuation | ~$11.5 billion+ at HK debut |
| Funding | $850M+ privately, incl. an Alibaba-led $600M round (2024) |
| Backers | MiHoYo, Alibaba, Tencent, Hillhouse, HongShan, IDG, ZhenFund |
| Flagship model | MiniMax M3 (open-weight, 1M context) |
| Consumer products | Hailuo (video generation), Talkie (AI companions) |
| Notable | Frontier-level open weights at ~5–10% of proprietary cost |
History and founding
MiniMax was founded in December 2021 by a group of computer-vision researchers who left SenseTime, one of China’s first major AI firms. Its earliest backer was MiHoYo, the studio behind Genshin Impact, which shaped MiniMax’s early consumer focus. The company built a reputation for efficient architectures — its earlier models pioneered “lightning attention” to handle very long contexts cheaply — and for shipping both frontier models and popular consumer apps.
By 2024 it had raised an Alibaba-led $600 million round at a ~$2.5 billion valuation, with Tencent, Hillhouse, HongShan (Sequoia China), IDG Capital and the prolific early backer ZhenFund also on the cap table (Wikipedia). In January 2026 it IPO’d in Hong Kong, part of a wave of Chinese AI listings, and is reportedly preparing a secondary listing on Shanghai’s STAR Market (SCMP).
Models and products
MiniMax spans frontier models and consumer apps:
- MiniMax M3 — the open-weight flagship (1 June 2026): 1M-token context, native multimodality and frontier-level coding, released with open weights and very low API pricing.
- Earlier M-series and MiniMax-01 — the lineage that established its long-context, efficient-attention approach.
- Hailuo — MiniMax’s text-to-video generator, one of the more capable consumer video models out of China.
- Talkie — a popular AI-companion app, reflecting the consumer DNA from its MiHoYo roots.
The open-weight M-series is the part most relevant to developers and enterprises: capable models you can self-host or call cheaply via API.
Business and market position
MiniMax sits in the open-weight, low-cost tier of the market, competing with DeepSeek, Alibaba’s Qwen, Moonshot’s Kimi and Zhipu’s GLM — China’s leading open-model labs. Its differentiation is the combination of frontier-adjacent quality, genuinely open weights, very low pricing, and consumer reach (Hailuo, Talkie), backed now by public-market capital. Bloomberg reported MiniMax more than doubled sales into 2026 amid the boom (Bloomberg).
Against the US frontier labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google), MiniMax trades the last increment of capability and long-horizon agentic reliability for openness and cost — the same trade the whole open-weight cluster makes.
Where MiniMax excels
- Open weights at the frontier. MiniMax M3 lands within a fraction of a point of the proprietary leaders on SWE-bench Verified while being downloadable and self-hostable.
- Cost. API pricing roughly a tenth of US labs’, and free to self-host.
- Long context and efficiency. A heritage of efficient-attention architectures and 1M-token windows.
- Consumer reach. Hailuo (video) and Talkie (companions) give it a consumer footprint most model labs lack.
Where MiniMax falls short
- Not the absolute frontier. Like the open-weight cluster, it trails the best proprietary models on the hardest tasks and long-horizon agentic reliability.
- Data-governance concerns. As a China-based, China-hosted provider, it raises the same data-residency and compliance questions as its peers for Western enterprises and governments.
- Brand recognition. Outside China and the developer community, MiniMax is far less known than OpenAI, Anthropic or Google.
Developer resources
MiniMax offers an API platform (minimax.io) for its M-series models and media tools, and publishes open weights for MiniMax M3 and earlier models (typically on Hugging Face) for self-hosting and fine-tuning. Pricing and model IDs are on the platform site; the open weights allow air-gapped and data-sovereign deployment.
Frequently asked questions
What is MiniMax?
MiniMax is a Chinese AI company founded in 2021 by former SenseTime researchers and backed by MiHoYo, Alibaba and Tencent. It makes the open-weight MiniMax M-series models, the Hailuo video generator and the Talkie companion app, and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January 2026.
What is MiniMax’s best model?
MiniMax M3, released 1 June 2026 — an open-weight model with a 1M-token context and native multimodality that matches or beats GPT-5.5 and Gemini 3.1 Pro on key coding benchmarks at a fraction of the cost.
Is MiniMax open source?
Its flagship M-series models are released as open weights, free to download and self-host, which is central to MiniMax’s strategy. Its consumer apps (Hailuo, Talkie) are hosted services.
Is MiniMax publicly traded?
Yes. MiniMax listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January 2026, where its shares more than doubled on debut (valuing it at roughly $11.5 billion or more), and it is reportedly preparing a secondary listing on Shanghai’s STAR Market.
Is MiniMax safe for enterprise use?
Its open weights enable self-hosted, air-gapped deployment, which helps. But as a China-based, China-hosted provider, MiniMax raises the same data-residency and compliance considerations as other Chinese labs; Western enterprises and governments should weigh those before using the hosted API.
Models
| Model | SWE | Context | In | Out | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MiniMax M3 | 80.5% | 1M | $0.3 | $1.2 | Available |