As major global artificial intelligence (AI) corporations such as OpenAI and SpaceX are drawing attention by signaling listings in 2026, China's homegrown AI corporation MiniMax will list on the Hong Kong stock exchange a little over four years after its founding. MiniMax's future tasks include securing a differentiation strategy to take on global corporations in the fast-growing large model market and addressing risks such as intellectual property (IP) infringement in the model training process.
According to Chinese business outlet Caixin on the 2nd, MiniMax will start trading on Jan. 9. It will issue 25,389,200 new shares, with an offering price of 151–165 Hong Kong dollars per share (about 28,000–30,600 won). Through this initial public offering (IPO), MiniMax will raise up to 41.9 billion Hong Kong dollars (about 7.7603 trillion won). Major investors such as Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), one of Abu Dhabi's three big funds, China big tech Alibaba, and Hong Kong private equity firm Boyu Capital are participating.
According to the prospectus, MiniMax will invest 70% of the funds raised through this IPO into large model research and development (R&D) over the next five years. It plans to invest 153 million Hong Kong dollars (about 28.3 billion won) annually in multimodal models, 96 million Hong Kong dollars (about 17.8 billion won) in text models, 76 million Hong Kong dollars (about 14.1 billion won) in image and video models, and 38 million Hong Kong dollars (about 7 billion won) in audio and music models, respectively. Of the remaining 30%, 20% will go to AI-native (designed with AI from the outset) product development and 10% to working capital and other purposes.
◇ Noticed for AI character chat app, ultrafast listing in four years
MiniMax is a startup founded in Dec. 2021. It is headquartered in Shanghai and was founded by CEO Yan Junjie. Yan previously led artificial general intelligence (AGI) technology at China's top facial recognition technology corporation SenseTime (Shangtang Keji).
MiniMax launched the AI social service app "Glow" in China in 2022, the year after its founding. Glow lets users create AI chatbot characters and have personalized conversations, quickly amassing millions of users. However, it ran into licensing issues and was removed from app markets.
Afterward, MiniMax obtained a license in Aug. 2023 and relaunched a similar service, "Xingye." The overseas version, "Talkie," drew attention with a feature to converse with famous figures and ranked in the top five for entertainment app downloads in the United States for several consecutive months. As global large model competition accelerated after 2024, MiniMax drew notice by rolling out large language models (LLMs), text and image generation models, and audio generation models in succession.
◇ Losses pile up amid fierce competition… focus on differentiation strategy
According to China Business News, the global large language model market is growing rapidly. The market size is expected to surpass $3 billion by 2030, while AI is projected to contribute $19.9 trillion to the global economy in the same period and boost global GDP by 3.5%.
The outlook is bright, but competition is extremely fierce. MiniMax must chase global corporations represented by OpenAI while competing with other startups in China and going up against giants such as Alibaba and Tencent (腾讯). Citing a report by Zhaoshi Consulting (灼识咨询), MiniMax released findings that as of 2024 it ranked as the world's No. 10 large model technology corporation. However, the top three corporations hold 30.1%, 16.9% and 8.2% of the market, leaving MiniMax with a 0.3% share.
Looking at MiniMax's results, it posted $53.437 million (about 77.1 billion won) in revenue in the first to third quarters of last year, while recording a $512 million (about 739.2 billion won) loss in the same period. Its cumulative loss reached $1.32 billion (about 1.9058 trillion won), and cumulative research and development expenditure totaled $450 million (about 649.7 billion won).
Regarding MiniMax's management strategy, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Yun Yeyi said, "We will not collide head-on with large corporations, we will not fixate on competition, and we will focus on our own strengths." For example, viewing conversational AI products as an area of strength for large platforms, he said the company will focus on two directions: ▲ expanding from content tools to content platforms ▲ AI agents.
Founder Yan Junjie also said, "The large model market is not yet in a 'zero-sum' competition stage, and no single model will monopolize the market," adding, "Chinese models trail global models by about 5% in performance, but their expense is about one-tenth, so I think each has room to survive."
◇ Sued by global IP holders… IP infringement risk surfaces
However, intellectual property (IP) issues are cited as a major risk. The company said directly that documents, videos, images and audio without authorization may be used in large model training, exposing it to risks such as legal disputes and damages, data deletion, and model retraining.
In fact, MiniMax was sued for copyright infringement last September by Disney, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Discovery. They claimed that MiniMax's image and video generation platform "Hailuo AI" used their IP without authorization. They said that with only simple text prompts, users could generate and download character images and videos from their core IP—such as Darth Vader from "Star Wars" and the Minions from "Despicable Me"—alongside the MiniMax brand logo. MiniMax warned that in the worst case, damages could reach $75 million (about 108.3 billion won).