NewsAug 26, 2026, 14:50 UTC

Chinese AI Firm MiniMax’s ARR Jumps to $800 Million

What's the deal? Chinese AI developer MiniMax said its annualized revenue run rate (ARR) jumped to $800 million this month, from $150 million in February, driven by demand from enterprise customers for its new AI video model and large language models.

What's the endgame? The growth reflects an ongoing shift in MiniMax's business model. A year ago, the Shanghai-based company generated most of its revenue from consumer products such as its Talkie AI roleplay app. It is now focusing more on selling its AI models to enterprise customers through application programming interfaces (APIs).

By the numbers: MiniMax, which is listed in Hong Kong, said first-half revenue more than tripled year on year to $116.6 million. Revenue from API sales and other enterprise services rose eight-fold to $73.9 million, accounting for 63.4% of first-half revenue, up from 30.3% a year earlier. Its first-half loss narrowed to $358 million, from $402 million a year earlier.

What could go wrong? Despite the rapid growth in model revenue, MiniMax faces fierce competition from Chinese AI developers rolling out increasingly powerful models. Rival Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, released last month, became a major hit by delivering frontier-level performance to challenge Anthropic and OpenAI.

The product: To keep up with Moonshot and other rivals, MiniMax is developing a new large-size flagship model known internally as M3 Pro, The Information reported last month. In AI video generation, MiniMax's H3 open-source video model, released in late July, ranks third in text-to-video and second in image-to-video on Artificial Analysis's leaderboard, making it a major competitor to industry leader ByteDance.

The signal: MiniMax's jump from $150 million to $800 million in ARR in six months shows how quickly enterprise demand is reshaping the company's revenue mix. The shift also puts its growth directly against the intensifying competition among Chinese AI model developers.