Mini Chuangxiang, Alibaba teams up to promote Hong Kong IPO... China's first round of AI-generated content players compete in the battle

Chinese AI startup MiniMax is actively pushing forward its IPO in the Hong Kong stock market. The initial public offering (IPO), which involves major investors such as Alibaba and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, aims to raise approximately $600 million (about 864 billion KRW). Industry sources reveal that the demand forecast for investors is expected to be launched as early as this week.

This listing is achieved amid a fierce competition among Chinese generative AI companies, including MiniMax, rushing into the stock market, and is seen as the beginning of a heated battle for market dominance. MiniMax’s investor list also includes DG Capital, Perseverance Asset Management, and Korea’s Mirae Asset Group, attracting significant global capital attention.

MiniMax is a company rapidly growing in the field of multimodal generative AI models that cover text, images, videos, and speech generation. Its recently announced next-generation model “M2.1” is evaluated as a high-performance AI capable of handling multilingual tasks, programming, and enterprise-level work, demonstrating its competitiveness.

The Chinese generative AI market is fiercely contested among companies like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, even being called the “Hundred Model Battle,” but MiniMax stands out with its unique technological strength and product application potential. Especially in areas such as the “intelligent agent” functions suitable for executing real-world tasks and back-office automation, it has surpassed competitors, establishing a differentiated market position.

However, there is still room for improvement in revenue. Last year, MiniMax achieved approximately $30.5 million (about 440 billion KRW) in revenue, while OpenAI’s revenue forecast for the same year was about $13 billion (approximately 18.72 trillion KRW). Nevertheless, market sentiment towards MiniMax remains high. In July this year, MiniMax raised over $300 million (about 4,320 billion KRW), and in March last year, it successfully completed a Series funding round led by Alibaba, amounting to about $600 million.

Meanwhile, competitor Zhipu AI (officially Beijing Zhipu Huazhang Technology Co., Ltd.) has also launched an IPO plan, aiming for a public offering of approximately $560 million (about 806 billion KRW) in Hong Kong. Zhipu AI plans to go public on January 8, and both companies are engaged in intense competition to secure the first IPO title in China’s generative AI market.

With the combination of advanced AI model technology and abundant liquidity in the investment market, the wave of AI company listings in China is likely to continue in the short term. MiniMax’s listing is regarded as a milestone of symbolic significance, as it may lead the market to form corporate recognition centered on technological strength.