MiniMax Group (0100.HK), the Shanghai-based artificial intelligence startup often called China’s second “AI tiger,” saw its shares soar by 78% on its first day of trading in Hong Kong on Friday, January 9, 2026. After pricing its upsized Initial Public Offering (IPO) at HK299. The surge, which values the company at approximately $11.6 billion, follows a massive public oversubscription of 1,837 times, signaling intense global interest in China’s rapidly evolving generative AI sector despite ongoing geopolitical tensions.
Founded in early 2022 by Yan Junjie, a former executive at SenseTime, MiniMax has differentiated itself through a “multimodal” approach that processes text, audio, images, and video simultaneously. The startup’s rapid ascent to the public market—achieved in less than four years—was fueled by the popularity of its consumer-facing applications, such as the video generation tool Hailuo AI and the character-interaction app Talkie. Market analysts noted that MiniMax’s consumer-centric model appeared more attractive to high-growth investors compared to its rival, Zhipu AI, which debuted just a day earlier with a more modest 13% gain.
The IPO raised HK$4.8 billion ($620 million), with a prestigious lineup of cornerstone investors including Alibaba Group, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), South Korea’s Mirae Asset, and Boyu Capital. CEO Yan Junjie described the listing as “only the beginning” during the bell-ringing ceremony, expressing hope that the pace of technological progress in the AI industry would remain accelerated over the next four years. The company intends to use the proceeds to fund research and development of foundation models and to expand its reach into Southeast Asia and the Middle East, regions where US influence is increasingly being challenged by Chinese tech expansion.
MiniMax’s successful debut is being viewed as a litmus test for the “Battle of One Hundred Models” in China, where startups are racing to prove commercial viability. While the company posted an adjusted loss of approximately $186 million in the first nine months of 2025, investors were swayed by its high gross margins and the efficient performance of its open-source models. As other firms like Huawei’s xFusion and memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies prepare for their own listings, MiniMax has set a high bar for the next wave of Chinese “AI tigers” entering the global financial stage.
