(Yicai) March 11 -- Shares of MiniMax Group plunged after soaring over the past two days, mainly thanks to the growing popularity of artificial intelligence agent OpenClaw, with the Chinese AI startup seeing its market capitalization exceed that of tech titan Baidu.

MiniMax [HKG: 0100] tumbled 8.1 percent to HKD1,121 (USD143.21) as of 2.15 p.m. in Hong Kong today, after jumping 24 percent on March 9 and 22 percent yesterday. Its market cap reached HKD352.2 billion (USD45 billion). Baidu's stock [HKG: 9888] rose 1.7 percent to HKD122.90 (USD15.70), bringing its market cap to HKD338.3 billion.

The direct driving force for MiniMax's recent stock rise is the OpenClaw craze, according to industry experts. The Shanghai-based firm launched MaxClaw, a cloud-based AI assistant built based on the AI agent, on Feb. 26, while it said it had provided support related to model capabilities for OpenClaw on Jan. 27.

MiniMax's market cap surpassing that of Baidu is essentially "future expectations" beating "current profits", but the high value also implies high risks, analysts pointed out. Based on its annual revenue, its price-to-sales ratio is 618 times, around 18 times more than that of OpenAI.

MiniMax's income climbed 159 percent to USD79 million in the 12 months ended Dec. 31, with an adjusted net loss of USD251 million, it said in a financial report released on March 2. In comparison, Baidu saw its revenue top CNY129.1 billion (USD18.7 billion), or over 239 times that of MiniMax, while its net profit plunged 76 percent to CNY5.6 billion (USD814.3 million) from 2024.

Pricing at 50 times revenue might be a relatively reasonable approach, but MiniMax's market cap is clearly boosted by extremely high growth expectations, an investor told Yicai. In an AI battlefield full of giants, whether the firm can launch solid technologies and make progress will be the key to maintaining its high market cap, the person added.

MiniMax, one of China's six "AI tigers," listed on Jan. 9 at an initial public offering price of HKD165. Its market cap has since exceeded that of leading online travel agency Trip.Com Group and short-video platform Kuaishou.

Yan Junjie, founder of MiniMax, interned at Baidu's Institute of Deep Learning in 2014. He became one of only eight people in China to win the second Baidu Scholarship, with the company providing him with CNY200,000 (USD28,930) in research funding.

Editor: Martin Kadiev