MiniMax soars 54% in $619m Hong Kong AI IPO debut

MiniMax’s explosive Hong Kong debut is one of the clearest signals yet that public markets are ready to bankroll pure-play AI model companies, not just chipmakers and cloud giants. The company is positioning itself as a Chinese “AI tiger” with multimodal models and consumer chat products that compete directly with OpenAI-style offerings. A near-80% first‑day pop, underpinned by heavyweight backers like Alibaba and ADIA, tells founders and regulators that listed equity can now support the same scale of AI investment that late‑stage private rounds have been funding.

Strategically, this pushes the AI race into a new phase where capital-intensive foundation model work is no longer confined to U.S. and private Chinese players. MiniMax will be under pressure to convert IPO proceeds into faster model training, more aggressive global expansion of its Talkie app, and deeper GPU procurement, which in turn may intensify competition for compute and talent in Asia. For the broader ecosystem, a successful listing creates a valuation benchmark for Zhipu and other Chinese LLM vendors eyeing IPOs, and gives Beijing a high‑profile proof point that domestic champions can tap public markets even under U.S. export controls.