MiniMax plans to price its Hong Kong Special Administrative Region initial public offering at the top of the marketed range, people familiar with the matter said, reflecting investor enthusiasm for Chinese mainland startups that are increasingly challenging US rivals like OpenAI.
The Shanghai-based company advised investors it would sell shares at HK$165 apiece, the people said, asking not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. Given strong demand, it intends to stop taking orders from institutional investors at 5 pm local time in each region on Monday, the people added, a day earlier than expected.
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MiniMax, backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, is among the first of the mainland’s post-ChatGPT generative AI firms to go public. It started taking orders last Wednesday for shares at a minimum of HK$151. At the top of the range, MiniMax will raise at least HK$4.2 billion ($538 million). It has an option to increase the deal size.
A MiniMax representative declined to comment.
MiniMax’s IPO drew demand from investors for several times the shares on offer, the people said. Those included sovereign wealth funds and global long-only investors — which generally invest in stocks they expect to rise while abstaining from short-selling.
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The company is expected to begin trading Friday, fueling a busy start of the year for Hong Kong. Firms tied to AI are expected to fill the Asian financial hub’s pipeline for share sales in 2026: Some 11 companies have laid out plans to list in Hong Kong this month, with proceeds of as much as $4.1 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
MiniMax’s debut is slated for the same week as close rival Zhipu, both considered key rivals to American firms such as Anthropic. They’re the first of the so-called mainland AI dragons to list, emerging from a field that includes fellow startups Moonshot and Stepfun.
