MilestoneAug 26, 2026, 16:47 UTC

MiniMax’s ARR hits $800M, up from $150M in February

What's the deal? Chinese AI developer MiniMax said its annualised revenue run rate jumped to $800 million this month, up from $150 million in February. The surge came from enterprise demand for its new AI video model and large language models.

What's the endgame? The Shanghai-based company is reshaping its business model. A year ago, most revenue came from consumer products such as its Talkie AI roleplay chat app; now it prioritises selling models to enterprise customers via application programming interfaces (APIs).

By the numbers: First-half revenue more than tripled year on year to $116.6 million, MiniMax told investors. Revenue from API sales and other enterprise services soared eight-fold to $73.9 million, making up 63.4% of first-half revenue — up from 30.3% a year earlier.

The Hong Kong-listed company also narrowed its first-half loss to $358 million, from $402 million a year earlier.

The product: MiniMax’s H3 open-source video model, released in late July, ranks third in the text-to-video category and second in the image-to-video category on Artificial Analysis’s video leaderboard. That positions it as a major competitor to industry leader ByteDance.

What could go wrong? MiniMax faces fierce competition from Chinese rivals shipping increasingly powerful models. Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3, released last month, became a hit by delivering frontier-level performance to challenge Anthropic and OpenAI.

To keep pace, MiniMax is developing a new flagship model known internally as M3 Pro, The Information reported last month.

The signal: MiniMax’s pivot from consumer apps to enterprise APIs mirrors a broader race among Chinese AI developers to monetise models. With rivals like Moonshot and ByteDance pushing frontier performance, revenue growth alone may not secure a lasting lead.