Chinese AI Firm MiniMax Revenue Nearly Quadruples — Update

By Tracy Qu

MiniMax sharply boosted revenue but growth was slower than expected as the Chinese artificial-intelligence company worked to narrow the capability gap with leading AI model developers.

The generative-AI startup is competing in a market where Chinese companies have been rolling out increasingly sophisticated AI models at an accelerating pace. Moonshot AI recently released its Kimi K3, surprising the market with its model size and capabilities. ByteDance's Seedance video-generation models have also attracted wide attention.

The Shanghai-based company's revenue nearly quadrupled to $116.6 million for the first half of 2026, partly thanks to rapidly increasing demand for model inference, according to an earnings report on Wednesday. That's lower than analysts' estimates of $144.5 million.

MiniMax said it believes model intelligence has "substantial room to advance."

"Our objective is to deliver increasingly capable intelligence with compelling unit economics, making frontier capabilities affordable at scale," it said.

Net loss narrowed to $358.0 million from $402.2 million, better than expectations, the company said Wednesday.

MiniMax's shares have fallen sharply since hitting a record in March, when its market capitalization neared $60 billion, as competition in the AI sector intensified. Ahead of the results, shares were nearly 80% off its peak.

Despite the volatility, AI stocks remain the hottest trade globally, and analysts say MiniMax is likely to benefit from mainland Chinese investors gaining access to the Hong Kong-listed stock following its inclusion in the Stock Connect program. The startup has also unveiled plans to list on Shanghai's Nasdaq-like STAR market, seeking to tap domestic capital markets amid the AI frenzy.

MiniMax last month released H3, a general-purpose, multimodal model supporting text, image, video and sound. Given the competitive landscape, however, investors will likely want evidence that the H3 model is translating into revenue contribution for MiniMax, even if the model receives positive feedback, Citi analysts said at the time.

On Wednesday, MiniMax said revenue generated outside the Chinese mainland contributed around 61% of total revenue, down from 72% last year.

Excluding share-based payment expenses, fair-value loss on financial liabilities and listing expenses, adjusted net loss was $293.03 million in the six months ended June, widening from $138.74 million in the year-ago period. Research and development expenses more than doubled, while selling expenses declined 18%.

Jefferies analysts in August reiterated MiniMax as of its "best buy ideas," citing its relatively more cost-efficient model, successful H3 model release and a coming model launch they said could match the size some of the best open-source models.

Write to Tracy Qu at tracy.qu@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 26, 2026 07:24 ET (11:24 GMT)