MiniMax suits teams that want open-weight language and video models from a lab that reports results publicly: revenue nearly quadrupled year on year in the first half of 2026. Buyers who need SOC 2 or ISO 27001 paperwork, or a vendor whose outside shareholders can outvote management, should look elsewhere.
MiniMax is a Shanghai AI lab, listed in Hong Kong since January 2026, that builds the MiniMax M3 language model, the open-weight H3 video model and consumer apps such as Hailuo AI and Talkie. Founder Yan Junjie controls the company through ten-vote shares, and it had 568 full-time employees in June 2026.
Founded: 2021 · HQ: Shanghai, China · Team: 568 full-time (June 2026) · CEO: Yan Junjie · Funding: ~$1.15B private pre-IPO (last: $300M Series B extension at $4B, Jul 2025, led by Shanghai STVC); HKEX IPO Jan 2026 raised HK$4.8B at HK$165; HK$9.54B placing at HK$268 and HK$6.5B convertible bonds, Jul 2026 · Valuation: Listed on HKEX (0100.HK): IPO at HK$165, first-day close HK$345 (Jan 9, 2026); July 2026 placing at HK$268 with 349.2M shares in issue
About MiniMax
MiniMax Group Inc. was incorporated in the Cayman Islands on June 30, 2021 and began research operations in Shanghai in January 2022, according to its Hong Kong listing prospectus. Its founder is Yan Junjie, who spent more than six years at SenseTime, latterly as a vice president, and now serves as chairman, chief executive and chief technology officer. The prospectus describes Yun Yeyi, also formerly of SenseTime, as the co-founder; she is chief operating officer and an executive director. Press coverage often lists Yang Bin and Zhou Yucong as co-founders as well. The prospectus records Zhou joining in March 2022 from Huawei (he is now an executive director leading visual-model research) and Yang Bin leaving the board in August 2024. The company frames its mission as "Intelligence with everyone".
MiniMax has been a public company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (ticker 0100) since January 9, 2026, yet control stays with its founder through weighted voting rights. Each Class B share carries ten votes, and all 81,102,534 Class B shares belong to Yan Junjie (74.1 million) and Yun Yeyi (7.0 million), per the company's August 2026 interim results. At listing, the prospectus put Yan's beneficial interest at 25.36% of the shares and 72.05% of the votes on ordinary resolutions. The largest outside holders it disclosed were Alibaba at about 12.5%, investment vehicles controlled by Colm O'Connell at about 5.4%, and the game studio miHoYo at about 5.2%; Tencent held less than the 5% disclosure line. A July 2026 placing of 35.6 million new Class A shares lifted the share count from 313.6 million to 349.2 million, diluting every holder, while the Class B count did not change.
Before listing, MiniMax raised roughly $1.15 billion from private investors including Alibaba, Tencent, miHoYo, HongShan, Hillhouse and IDG Capital. The last private round was a $300 million Series B extension in July 2025 at a $4 billion valuation, led by Shanghai STVC Group. The IPO priced at HK$165 a share and raised HK$4.8 billion (about $620 million); CNBC reported the stock closed its first day at HK$345, up 109%. In July 2026 the company raised a further HK$9.54 billion through the placing, at HK$268 a share, and HK$6.5 billion through zero-coupon convertible bonds due 2027 with a HK$335 conversion price.
The product line runs across text, video and voice. MiniMax M3, released in the first half of 2026, is the current flagship language model, with MiniMax M2.7 and M2.5 still served on the API. MiniMax H3, a general-purpose video model, was open-sourced on August 3, 2026, and the vendor's pricing page now lists the older Hailuo 2.3 video models as legacy. Speech 2.8 covers text-to-speech, and the consumer side includes the Hailuo AI video app, the Talkie companion app, MiniMax Agent and the MiniMax Code harness. One change for existing builders: from August 20, 2026 the paid music and lyrics APIs, including MiniMax Music 3.0, stopped accepting new customers.
The business is growing fast and still loses money. Revenue for the six months to June 30, 2026 was $116.6 million, up 283.1% from $30.4 million a year earlier and already above the $79.0 million reported for all of 2025. The Open Platform and enterprise services brought in $73.9 million of that, 63.4% of the total, and AI-native consumer products $42.6 million. Gross margin was 17.9%, the adjusted net loss was $293.0 million, and the company held $1.32 billion in cash with 568 full-time employees at the end of June. MiniMax says it serves users in more than 230 countries and regions.
On governance, MiniMax publishes no responsible scaling policy, names no external red-teaming partners and releases no detailed system cards, and training data for the M-series is largely undisclosed. Its data-handling FAQ states that customer API inputs are not used for training unless a customer opts in. As a Shanghai-headquartered company it operates under the Cyberspace Administration of China's generative AI rules. No SOC 2 Type II report, ISO 27001 certificate or HIPAA-eligible tier was found in public sources as of mid-2026.
Where the alternatives win: DeepSeek suits teams that only need text and reasoning models such as DeepSeek V4, with no video or voice stack. Alibaba Cloud bundles its Qwen models with full cloud infrastructure, Z.ai leads on GLM enterprise distribution, and Moonshot AI, maker of Kimi K3, focuses on long-context agents. For video alone, Kling and Runway are the usual comparisons, and Character.AI competes with Talkie. MiniMax is a weak fit for regulated buyers who need audit certificates, and for anyone who wants outside shareholders to be able to outvote management: the dual-class structure rules that out. For how it sits among other labs, see the best AI companies of 2026.
Mission
Co-create intelligence with everyone, advancing toward artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Products
- MiniMax M-series (M3, M2.7) (Foundation LLM API): https://platform.minimax.io
- MiniMax H3 (Open-weight video generation model): https://www.minimax.io/news
- Hailuo AI (Video generation app): https://hailuoai.video
- MiniMax Agent (Agent platform): https://agent.minimax.io
- Talkie (Consumer AI companion app): https://www.talkie-ai.com
- MiniMax Speech 2.8 (Text-to-speech API): https://platform.minimax.io
MiniMax Models on HokAI
Links
Frequently Asked Questions
Who founded MiniMax and who is the CEO?
Yan Junjie founded MiniMax after more than six years at SenseTime, where he was a vice president, and he is now its chairman, CEO and CTO. The company's prospectus names Yun Yeyi, its chief operating officer, as co-founder. Zhou Yucong, often listed as a co-founder in press reports, joined in March 2022 and leads visual-model research, while Zhao Pengyu leads language-model research; both became executive directors in June 2025.
Who owns MiniMax now that it is listed?
Founder Yan Junjie controls MiniMax. Its shares trade in Hong Kong under 0100, but his ten-vote Class B shares gave him 72.05% of ordinary voting rights at listing on a 25.36% economic stake, per the December 2025 prospectus. Alibaba, at about 12.5%, and miHoYo, at about 5.2%, were the largest outside holders, and new shares sold in July 2026 have since diluted every holder.
How has MiniMax been funded, before and after its IPO?
Private investors put roughly $1.15 billion into MiniMax before its IPO, ending with a July 2025 Series B extension of $300 million that Shanghai STVC Group led, valuing the company at $4 billion. The January 2026 Hong Kong IPO raised HK$4.8 billion at HK$165 a share. In July 2026 it added a HK$9.54 billion share placing at HK$268 and HK$6.5 billion of convertible bonds due 2027.
What are the best alternatives to MiniMax?
DeepSeek is the closest pick for teams that want open-weight text and reasoning models without a video and voice suite. Alibaba Cloud fits buyers who want the Qwen models bundled with full cloud infrastructure, and Moonshot AI's Kimi suits long-context agent work. Buyers who only need video should test MiniMax H3 side by side with Kling or Runway on their own prompts.
How does MiniMax compare to DeepSeek in 2026?
Both are Chinese labs that release open-weight models, but MiniMax sells a wider line, with the H3 video model, Speech 2.8 voice and the Hailuo and Talkie apps, while DeepSeek stays on text and reasoning. MiniMax is listed in Hong Kong and publishes half-year results, reporting $116.6 million of revenue for the first half of 2026. DeepSeek is privately held and does not publish financial statements.
Top Alternatives
- Moonshot AI: Pick MiniMax for consumer scale (Talkie/Hailuo); pick Moonshot for Kimi long-context specialization.
- DeepSeek: Pick MiniMax for open-weight coding models paired with consumer apps like Talkie and Hailuo; pick DeepSeek for the lowest-cost frontier reasoning without the extra product layer.
- Alibaba Cloud: Pick MiniMax for its open-weight M-series and Hailuo video/audio suite; pick Alibaba Cloud for full-stack cloud infrastructure bundled with the Qwen model family.
HokAI guides that mention MiniMax
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- Best AI Companies in 2026: Who Is Actually Leading: Anthropic's revenue passed OpenAI's in 2026, even as OpenAI keeps the bigger valuation. See how six leading AI companies actually compare, by the numbers.
- Fireworks AI vs Together AI (2026): Managed Platform or Neocloud?: Fireworks AI and Together AI list identical prices on seven shared open models. The real split: Together rents GPU clusters, Fireworks sells managed models.