(Yicai) March 3 -- MiniMax Group’s shares jumped after the Chinese artificial intelligence startup said it more than doubled revenue last year, with overseas markets accounting for the bulk of sales.

MiniMax [HKG: 0100] closed 9.1 percent higher at HKD821 (USD105) per share in Hong Kong, after surging by as much as 21 percent this morning. The firm, one of China’s six “AI tigers,” listed on Jan. 9 at an initial public offering price of HKD165, since when the stock has gained fivefold.

Revenue climbed 159 percent to USD79 million in the 12 months ended Dec. 31, with sales abroad making up about 73 percent of that, the Shanghai-based company said in a financial report released yesterday. Most of the revenue came from AI-native products and an open platform, with other AI-based enterprise services also contributing. 

MiniMax’s net loss widened 302 percent to nearly USD1.9 billion, mainly due to fair value losses on financial instruments soaring to nearly USD1.6 billion from USD210 million in 2024. The adjusted net loss was USD251 million, versus USD244 million the year before.

Founded in early 2022, Minimax -- which is backed by the likes of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, game developer miHoYo, and Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund -- was the fastest AI startup to go public globally.

The company brought out its first text model in April 2022 and has since expanded quickly into video, music, and open-source text models, building a model portfolio centered on MiniMax-M2, MiniMax Hailuo-02, and MiniMax Speech-02, which underpin consumer apps such as Hailuo AI and Talkie, as well as enterprise platforms.

Last year, Minimax “built full-modality R&D capabilities, with globally competitive models in place across key modalities, including language, video, speech and music,” founder and Chief Executive Yan Junjie said in a statement. “Meanwhile, we continued to enhance the user experience through ongoing technological innovation, upgrading our AI-native product portfolio.

“Looking ahead, at the strategic level, we will evolve from a large-model company into a platform company for the AI era,” Yan said.

Research and development spending was the firm’s biggest annual outlay, jumping 34 percent to USD250 million, mainly due to model releases that led to higher cloud service expenses related to training activities.

MiniMax's products had amassed about 236 million users as of the end of last year, with more than 214,000 enterprise clients and developers. The company “made further progress in deepening our global footprint,” Yan noted.

Editor: Martin Kadiev