Shares of MiniMax, an AI firm backed by Chinese game developer MiHoYo, surged more than 70% in their Hong Kong trading debut today, briefly pushing the company’s market capitalisation above HK$90 billion ($11.5 billion).
MiniMax, founded by former SenseTime vice president Yan Junjie, listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under the stock code 00100.HK. The listing ranks among the fastest public offerings by a global AI company since its inception.
Why it matters: The strong debut underscores robust investor appetite for companies developing large language models and general-purpose artificial intelligence, as capital continues to flow into the sector despite heightened competition and rising development costs.
Details: MiniMax focuses on foundation models and AI applications, and has attracted backing from investors including MiHoYo, the developer of the hit game Genshin Impact.
- MiniMax priced its initial public offering at HK$165 per share. Assuming the full exercise of the greenshoe option, the company raised HK$5.54 billion ($710 million) in gross proceeds globally.
- Market demand was strong, with the Hong Kong public offering oversubscribed 1,837 times, while the international placement was covered 37 times. The IPO attracted 14 cornerstone investors, including Aspex, Eastspring, Mirae Asset, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), Alibaba, and E Fund Management, among other domestic and international institutions.
- As an angel investor in MiniMax, MiHoYo holds a 6.4% stake in the company, which is valued at more than HK$4.8 billion ($615 million) based on the latest market capitalisation. Other shareholders include Tencent, Alibaba, Sequoia China, Hillhouse Capital, and IDG Capital, according to public disclosures.
- Notably, ZhenFund participated in six consecutive funding rounds, making it the most active investor in the company. Its founding partner Huang Mingming said Yan Junjie’s decision-making on critical technology pathways gave the firm confidence that he could break the so-called impossible triangle of high performance, low cost and commercial scalability.
- Despite the strong market valuation, MiniMax said in its prospectus that it remains in a high-investment phase, posting a net loss of $512 million in the first three quarters of 2025. Proceeds from the IPO will be primarily used to upgrade large language models and develop AI-native products, founder Yan Junjie said. “We will continue striving for advances in intelligence and ensure that cutting-edge AI truly serves everyone,” he added.
Context: MiniMax has developed in-house multimodal foundation models spanning text, speech and video. Its abab 6.5 model series adopts a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture and delivers performance within 5% of leading US models at around 1% of the cost, the company said, and has been deployed at scale for commercial use.
- As of September 2025, MiniMax’s services reached users in more than 200 countries and regions, with over 70% of revenue generated overseas. Revenue in the first three quarters rose 170% year-on-year, while gross margin stood at 69.4%, according to the company.
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