 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Information technology |
| Founded | December 2021 |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | Shanghai, China |
Key people |
|
Number of employees | 100+ (2023) |
| Website | minimaxi.com |
MiniMax is an artificial intelligence (AI) company based in Shanghai, China. As of 2024, it has been dubbed one of China's "AI Tiger" companies by investors.
MiniMax was founded in December 2021 by several computer vision veterans from SenseTime. When it first started out, it received funding from MiHoYo. [1] [2] [3] [4]
In March 2024, Alibaba Group lead a $600 million financing round for MiniMax giving it a valuation of $2.5 billion. Other investors of MiniMax include Hillhouse Investment, HongShan, IDG Capital and Tencent. [1] [5]
In October 2024, it was reported Chinese phone makers opted for Minimax with regards to its foundational AI large models. [6]
MiniMax's first product was Glow which was launched in October 2022. The app allowed users to create virtual characters, give them background stories and then chat with them about various topics. Only four months after launch, the app had over 5 million users. Due to filing issues, Glow was terminated in March 2023. [3] [4]
Glow was relaunched under two new brands: Talkie, launched for international markets in June 2023, and Xing Ye (星野), introduced in September 2023 for the Chinese market. [4] [5]
Talkie was profiled The Wall Street Journal in July 2024. For June 2024 Talkie ranked fifth among the most-downloaded free entertainment apps in the U.S. More than half of Talkie’s 11 million monthly active users were in the U.S. Other popular markets included Philippines, the U.K. and Canada. Talkie offered AI-generated conversations with people such as Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, Elon Musk and LeBron James. [7]
In March 2024, MiniMax launched Hailuo AI, a multimodal large language model consumer platform that provides AI text and music-generating features. [2] [4]
In September 2024, MiniMax launched video-01, a text-to-video model under Hailuo AI. [2] A review by Tom's Guide stated it roughly equivalent to Luma Labs Dream Machine but not as good as Runway Gen-3. [8]
On 17 April 2024, MiniMax officially launched the ABAB 6.5 series, a mixture of experts language model. [4]
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