Chinese AI startup MiniMax is actively pursuing a Hong Kong IPO. The initial public offering (IPO), with participation from major investors including Alibaba and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, aims to raise approximately $600 million (about 864 billion Korean won). Industry sources indicate that demand forecasting for investors is expected to begin as early as this week.
This IPO comes amidst a flurry of activity from Chinese generative AI companies, including MiniMax, vying for stock market dominance, and is seen as the beginning of a fierce battle for control. MiniMax's investors include DG Capital, Perseverance Asset Management, and South Korea's Mirae Asset Group, making it a focus of global investment.
MiniMax is a rapidly growing company based on multimodal generative AI models that cover text, image, video, and speech generation. Its recently unveiled next-generation model, "M2.1," has been praised as a high-performance AI capable of handling multilingual tasks, programming, and enterprise-level work simultaneously, demonstrating its competitiveness.
The Chinese generative AI market is fiercely competitive, dominated by companies like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, and is even dubbed the "Battle of a Hundred Models." However, MiniMax has distinguished itself by leveraging its unique technological strength and product application potential. Particularly in areas such as "intelligent agent" functions suitable for real-world tasks and back-end office automation, its performance surpasses that of its competitors, establishing a differentiated market position.
However, there is still room for improvement in revenue. Last year, MiniMax achieved revenue of approximately $30.5 million (about 44 billion won), while OpenAI's revenue forecast for the same year was approximately $13 billion (about 18.72 trillion won). Despite this, market sentiment towards MiniMax remains high. In July of this year, MiniMax raised over $300 million (about 432 billion won), and in March of last year, it successfully completed a series of financing rounds totaling approximately $600 million led by Alibaba.
Meanwhile, competitor Zhipu AI (officially known as Beijing Zhipu Huazhang Technology Co., Ltd.) also launched its IPO, planning a public offering of approximately US$560 million (approximately 806 billion Korean won) in Hong Kong. Zhipu AI aims to list on January 8th, and the two companies are engaged in fierce competition for the title of the first company to IPO in China's generative AI market.
With the increasing sophistication of AI model technology combined with ample liquidity in the investment market, the IPO boom of Chinese AI companies is likely to continue in the short term. MiniMax's IPO is considered a symbolic milestone by the industry, as it may guide the market to form a perception of companies with core technological strength.
