Yan Junjie: Making Advanced Intelligence "Accessible to All."
According to IPO news, MiniMax Group Inc. (hereinafter referred to as "MiniMax") officially listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on January 9, 2026, under the stock code "0100," becoming the AI large model company with the largest IPO scale in history.
In this IPO, MiniMax issued a total of 29,197,600 shares. Its Hong Kong public offering was oversubscribed by 1,837.17 times, while the international offering was oversubscribed by 36.76 times. The company also secured 14 prominent cornerstone investors, including Aspex, Eastspring, Mirae Asset, ADIA, Alibaba, and E Fund, spanning international long-term funds, leading tech firms, Chinese long-term capital, and industrial strategic investors.
Priced at HK$165 per share, the IPO raised over HK$4.8 billion. By 10:30 AM, MiniMax's shares were trading at HK$266.4, a surge of 61.45% above the issue price, giving the company a market capitalization exceeding HK$80 billion.
At the listing ceremony, MiniMax founder and CEO Yan Junjie stated that the true value of an artificial intelligence company lies in providing a continuous stream of advanced intelligence that is accessible to people. MiniMax will persistently strive for the advancement of intelligence and contribute significantly to societal and economic development.
MiniMax, founded in early 2022, is one of the few large model companies that has focused on full-modality model research and development since its inception. Notably, the company maintains a rapid pace of technological iteration and frequent key breakthroughs, achieving significant progress successively in voice, video, and text models.
Starting in 2023, MiniMax launched Speech 01, China's first Transformer-based large speech model. An upgraded version, Speech 02, released in the first half of this year, ranked first in comprehensive performance. To date, MiniMax's speech models have helped users generate over 220 million hours of audio.
In August 2024, MiniMax released the video generation model Video 01 and its Hailuo AI video generation product, which was considered the best available video model at the time. An upgraded version, Hailuo 02, launched in June 2025, ranked second in the AA Video Arena. So far, MiniMax's video models have assisted creators in generating more than 590 million videos.
In October 2025, MiniMax released and open-sourced its new-generation text large model, MiniMax M2. Upon release, it ranked among the top five globally and first among open-source models on Artificial Analysis, marking the first time a Chinese open-source large model entered the global top five on that list. During its launch, M2 quickly climbed to become the most used domestic model by token volume on the global model aggregation platform OpenRouter, ranking third globally in programming scenarios.
Recently, on the LMARENA.AI WebDev leaderboard, MiniMax M2.1 Preview secured the fourth position globally (behind Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google) and first in China. Furthermore, legendary programmer DHH, creator of the Ruby on Rails web framework, praised MiniMax M2.1 highly on X, noting its impressive efficiency in handling complex codebases.
Overall, within less than four years, MiniMax has achieved leadership in text, video, and voice full-modality models, positioning itself as one of only four global companies whose full-modality capabilities are in the first tier.
This remarkable achievement was accomplished by a team predominantly born after 1995. As of September 30, 2025, MiniMax had 385 employees with an average age of 29; nearly 74% were R&D personnel, and the board's average age was 32.
In the AI field, youth signifies not just energy but an instinctive understanding of AI-native logic. This extreme youthfulness endows MiniMax with a "Silicon Valley-esque" agility in organizational efficiency—both its commercialization and operational efficiencies are notably high. For instance, the company employs a project-oriented approach with no more than three administrative layers below the CEO, an "extremist" R&D model that maintains a high cost-performance ratio in the computing power race.
Another stark comparison is that from its founding until September 2025, MiniMax cumulatively spent $500 million (approximately RMB 3.5 billion). Contrasted with OpenAI's estimated cumulative expenditure of $40-55 billion, MiniMax achieved global leadership in full-modality using less than 1% of the funds.
Leveraging its self-developed large models, MiniMax has successfully built a portfolio of AI-native products covering both C-end and B-end markets, including Hailuo AI, Talkie, and Xingye, while also offering open platform services for enterprise users and developers. As of September 30, 2025, MiniMax had over 212 million individual users across more than 200 countries and regions, alongside 130,000 enterprise customers in over 100 countries.
Commercially, MiniMax has established a high-quality, sustainable revenue matrix centered on subscription services and cloud API. All its products and businesses possess strong global scalability. On one hand, MiniMax directly reaches massive end-users through its AI-native products (To C); on the other, it deeply empowers global developers and enterprise clients via efficient API services on its open platform.
From 2023 to 2024, MiniMax's revenues were $3.5 million and $30.5 million respectively, representing a staggering year-on-year increase of 782.2% in 2024. As of September 30, 2025, To C revenue grew 181% year-on-year, while To B revenue increased by 160%.
It is important to note that unlike the "global expansion" model of traditional internet companies, MiniMax demonstrates a completely different path: being "born global." Its prospectus reveals a revenue structure with strong cross-regional expansion capabilities. For the first nine months of 2025, revenue grew over 170% year-on-year, with overseas income accounting for more than 70%—a rarity in the current large model landscape.
Furthermore, unlike many AI companies still focused on domestic verticals, MiniMax's multimodal interactive product "Talkie" exhibits dominant appeal in the overseas AI entertainment application market, and its video generation product "Hailuo AI" has repeatedly sparked viral trends with billions of views on global social media platforms. Through deep penetration in North American, Southeast Asian, and European markets, MiniMax has achieved not just quantitative user growth but a qualitative leap in commercialization capability.
Additional prospectus data shows that adjusted net loss in 2025 was nearly flat compared to the same period last year, effectively narrowing losses amidst rapid growth. This is attributed to a diversified revenue model and efficient expenditure—while revenue grew over 170% year-on-year in the first nine months of 2025, R&D expenses increased by only 30%, and sales and marketing expenses actually decreased by 26%, underscoring a growth logic driven by model intelligence and user word-of-mouth rather than heavy traffic investment.
According to a UNCTAD report, the global AI market is projected to surge from $189 billion in 2023 to $4.8 trillion by 2033, growing 25-fold in just a decade. MiniMax's successful listing today is expected to help it capitalize on this high-growth window, filling a gap in the AGI sector within the Hong Kong capital markets with its healthy, sustainable business model, and further strengthening its valuation logic through its scarcity.
Yunqi Capital was one of MiniMax's earliest investors, participating consecutively in six funding rounds starting from the angel round.
Chen Yu, Managing Partner of Yunqi Capital, recalled that when he first met Yan Junjie, GPT had not yet ignited the new wave of AGI. "At that time, the mainstream in China's AI industry still leaned towards developing specialized models for specific scenarios. Yet, in our very first conversation, Junjie emphasized the importance of the Foundation Model path for achieving Artificial General Intelligence. From Day 1, the company had a technical blueprint advancing simultaneously in three modalities: text, sound, and video. Such technical acumen and engineering ambition were key reasons we chose to support them at the earliest stage."
Chen Yu further pointed out that Yunqi firmly believes in MiniMax's ability to create a commercial closed-loop through "Model-Application Integration." MiniMax not only maintains first-tier technical performance in its underlying models but has also formed a standardized product matrix, including Talkie and Hailuo, achieving strong commercial growth in both To C and To B sectors. The team also optimized computing efficiency through early adoption of Mixture-of-Experts architecture, resulting in exceptionally high per capita output. "We believe MiniMax has the potential to navigate volatility throughout the AGI cycle and ultimately realize the translation of technical value into commercial value through continuous model iteration."
As another early investor, Momentum Venture Capital participated in MiniMax's funding in March 2022 and subsequently invested in six consecutive rounds, making it the institution that participated in the most funding rounds for MiniMax.
Huang Mingming, Founding Partner of Momentum Venture Capital, revealed that when he first met Yan Junjie, systematic research on large model investment was scarce in the market. "At that time, Yan Junjie discussed AGI, a topic rarely mentioned in the industry. He then talked about end-to-end data-driven approaches and the leap from AI 1.0 to AI 2.0, which deeply impressed our team. What struck me even more was that during our first meeting, he was reading an academic paper, not a business plan, which made me feel he was committed to a long-term endeavor."
Huang Mingming emphasized Momentum's strong belief in MiniMax's decisiveness and foresight in key technological decisions. MiniMax not only maintains first-tier performance in its underlying models but also decisively allocated significant resources to MoE architecture R&D in the second half of 2023, a move not yet consensus in the industry at the time. "Yan Junjie told me that only by developing MoE could they progress to higher model stages at lower cost."
"The recognition of MiniMax by mainstream global long-term investors signifies recognition of Chinese AI companies' capabilities, exploring a viable path for Chinese large model firms in global competition. I firmly believe that Chinese tech enterprises represented by MiniMax will shine on the global stage and have a profound impact on the future productivity revolution," Huang Mingming stated.
Oasis Capital first met MiniMax founder Dr. Yan Junjie at the end of 2022 and confirmed its investment intent the same day. In March 2023, Oasis completed its investment in MiniMax and continued investing in subsequent rounds, making it the largest single investment in Oasis's second USD fund.
Zhang Jinjian, Founding Partner of Oasis Capital, disclosed that three factors were persuasive: 1) MiniMax's vision, "Intelligence with Everyone," stemmed from Dr. Yan's years of research and persistence regarding AI generalization and universality, reflecting his belief in the popularization of AI technology—a direction unchanged by entrepreneurship and implemented into the company's tech and product strategy; 2) MiniMax was the first Asian company to choose simultaneous self-research of text, voice, and video full-modality models, a choice based on a forward-looking judgment about the AGI path: general intelligence must be built on a holistic understanding of the multimodal world; 3) In his first discussion with Oasis, Dr. Yan clearly stated MiniMax's goal to be a global AI company from Day 1, requiring immense courage and persistence.
"We believe artificial intelligence is reshaping production methods and social structures, with AGI being the long-term direction of this transformation. MiniMax's listing is a significant milestone in this process. Looking ahead, Oasis will continue to focus on companies with underlying innovation capabilities and a global vision, accompanying and supporting entrepreneurs' growth," Zhang Jinjian stated.
Sequoia Capital China participated in MiniMax's A+ round in July 2023 and supported multiple subsequent rounds, making it one of Sequoia China's largest investments in the large model space to date. Pre-IPO, Sequoia China held a 3.81% stake in MiniMax, making it the third-largest financial investor.
Zheng Qingsheng, Partner at Sequoia Capital China, revealed that during his first meeting with the Sequoia China team, Yan Junjie described a long-term vision centered around "creating and operating deeply interactive intelligent agents." He had two core judgments at the time: First, Intelligence with everyone—AI would transition from an elite technology to directly serving ordinary users; Second, large models were the necessary path to general intelligence, not a short-term transitional solution.
"Looking back today, both judgments have been accurately validated in AGI's development and deeply integrated into the company's strategy. But at that time, it was nine months before OpenAI released GPT-3.5, and Yan Junjie's超前 foresight was a typical non-consensus view," Zheng Qingsheng added. "The result shows that MiniMax's ability to continuously launch leading, breakout products in a rapidly evolving tech cycle relates to the team's emphasis on efficiency and engineering capability, its early establishment of a 'born global' product and organizational perspective, and most crucially, its steadfast belief in AGI and long-termism spirit."
