Chinese AI company MiniMax is exploring plans for an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong, reported Bloomberg citing sources familiar with the matter.
The Shanghai-based company, valued at approximately $3bn, could pursue a listing as early as this year, the sources told the publication.
MiniMax has engaged financial advisers to support the IPO process.
However, deliberations are ongoing, and details such as the company’s valuation and the timing of the listing may still change, the sources added.
MiniMax did not respond to requests for comment, Bloomberg said.
A potential IPO by MiniMax would offer investors an opportunity to invest in a new wave of Chinese companies driving advancements in AI technology.
Another prominent AI startup, Zhipu, is also preparing for a public listing.
Interest in these companies, often referred to as China’s “AI Dragons” or “Tigers,” surged following the launch of DeepSeek in January 2025, as these startups compete with larger tech giants to challenge US industry leaders such as OpenAI.
Established in 2021, MiniMax secured $600m in a funding round last year, which valued the company at around $2.5bn at the time.
The round was led by Alibaba Group Holding, with earlier investments from entities including Tencent Holdings. Zhipu also counts Alibaba and Tencent among its backers.
MiniMax recently introduced a new AI reasoning model, M1, which it claims is larger and more resource-efficient than DeepSeek’s latest offering.
The company also enhanced its text-to-video model, which powers its video editing platform, Hailuo AI.
Additionally, MiniMax offers an AI companion app called Talkie, positioning it as a competitor to US-based Character.AI.
In January 2025, MiniMax launched a range of affordable open-source models.
The company introduced the MiniMax-01 family of large language models (LLMs), which includes the foundational MiniMax-Text-01 and the multimodal MiniMax-VL-01 featuring visual capabilities.
Other AI Tigers, such as Baichuan and Moonshot, have also rolled out new models in recent months, underscoring the sector’s competitive momentum.
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