BEIJING, March 2 (Reuters) – Chinese artificial intelligence startup MiniMax aims to become a global AI platform company and unveiled plans on Monday for faster expansion with a broader product line after strong revenue growth in 2025.
The company had a 159% increase in revenue compared to the previous year, reaching US$79 million, with more than 70% of sales outside China.
Revenue from products built directly around AI, primarily subscriptions, increased 143.4%, while the open platform and enterprise services segment saw similar expansion.
The announcement was MiniMax’s first earnings update since it raised 4.8 billion Hong Kong dollars ($614 million) in an initial public offering in Hong Kong in January.
The performance highlights growing demand for cheaper, open source-based models from Chinese vendors such as MiniMax and DeepSeek, which position themselves as low-cost alternatives to US proprietary systems.
DeepSeek focuses on text-based reasoning models and development tools, while MiniMax emphasizes multimodal capabilities that span text, video, and audio.
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MiniMax chief executive Yan Junjie said the company aims to compete as a model developer and product platform while maintaining its open source approach to attract external developers.
The company plans to launch its latest M3 model in the first half of this year.
However, the MiniMax remains much smaller than its North American competitors. OpenAI said its annualized revenue will exceed $20 billion in 2025.
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MiniMax also continues to make a loss, with a negative net result of US$1.87 billion in 2025, compared to a loss of US$465.2 million in the previous year. Most of the 2025 loss came from changes in the value of the financial instruments it holds.
“We believe that AI is currently not a zero-sum market, but rather a market where annual incremental growth far exceeds the existing base,” said Yan, highlighting opportunities in coding, office productivity and video generation.
(By Liam Mo and Brenda Goh)
