MiniMax is considering an initial public offering in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, people familiar with the situation said, in what would be a landmark industry debut for a Chinese mainland AI startup valued at about $3 billion.
MiniMax, one of the country’s so-called AI Dragons or Tigers, could aim to list as soon as this year, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is confidential. The Shanghai-based company has hired financial advisers for the IPO, they said.
Deliberations are ongoing and details such as valuation and timing could change, the people said. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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A MiniMax IPO would enable investors to buy into a new generation of mainland firms advancing AI technology. Another, Zhipu, is also preparing to debut. The emergence of DeepSeek in January fired up interest in the startups, which are now vying with larger tech companies to compete with US leaders like OpenAI.
Founded in 2021, MiniMax raised $600 million last year in a financing round that valued it at about $2.5 billion at the time. The deal was led by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and followed fundraising involving Tencent Holdings Ltd., among others. Zhipu is also backed by Alibaba and Tencent.
Mainland tech firms are racing to build low-cost AI products and will require capital to sustain a dizzying pace of investment and research. Other AI Tigers including Baichuan and Moonshot have unveiled new models in recent months.
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MiniMax just this week outlined a spate of new services. It released a reasoning model called the M1, saying it’s bigger and less resource-consuming than DeepSeek’s latest. It plans to roll out a pair of products that autonomously perform tasks on behalf of users, upping its game in the realm of agentic AI against the likes of OpenAI and Manus.
And it upgraded a text-to-video model underpinning its video editor Hailuo AI. Other products include AI companion app Talkie, which competes with Character.AI in the US.
