MiniMax is an artificial intelligence (AI) company based in Shanghai, China. As of 2024, it has been dubbed one of China's "AI Tiger" companies by investors.
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| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Information technology |
| Founded | December 2021 |
| Founders |
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| Headquarters | Shanghai, China |
Key people |
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Number of employees | 100+ (2023) |
| Website | minimaxi.com |
Background
editMiniMax was founded in December 2021 by several computer vision veterans from SenseTime. When it first started out, it received funding from MiHoYo.[1][2][3][4]
In March 2024, Alibaba Group lead a $600 million financing round for MiniMax giving it a valuation of $2.5 billion. Other investors of MiniMax include Hillhouse Investment, HongShan, IDG Capital and Tencent.[1][5]
Products
editTalkie
editMiniMax's first product was Glow which was launched in October 2022. The app allowed users to create virtual characters, give them background stories and then chat with them about various topics. Only four months after launch, the app had over 5 million users. Due to filing issues, Glow was terminated in March 2023.[3][4]
Glow would be relaunched under two new separate brands. In June 2023, Talkie was launched for international markets and in September 2023.[4][5]
Talkie was profiled The Wall Street Journal in July 2024. For June 2024 Talkie ranked fifth among the most-downloaded free entertainment apps in the U.S. More than half of Talkie’s 11 million monthly active users were in the U.S. Other popular markets included Philippines, the U.K. and Canada. Talkie offered AI-generated conversations with people such as Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, Elon Musk and LeBron James.[6]
Hailuo AI
editIn March 2024, MiniMax launched Hailuo AI, a Multimodal large language model consumer platform that provides AI text and music-generating features.[2][4]
In September 2024, MiniMax launched video-01, a text-to-video model under Hailuo AI.[2] A review by Tom's Guide stated it roughly equivalent to Luma Labs Dream Machine but not as good as Runway Gen-3.[7]
ABAB Series
editOn 17 April 2024, MiniMax officially launched the ABAB 6.5 series, a mixture of experts language model.[4]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ a b Zhang, Jane (5 March 2024). "Alibaba Backs $2.5 Billion AI Firm in Second Big 2024 Deal". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 8 September 2024.
- ^ a b c "Chinese AI 'tiger' MiniMax launches text-to-video-generating model to rival OpenAI's Sora". Yahoo Finance. 2 September 2024. Retrieved 8 September 2024.
- ^ a b Liu, Roxanne (1 June 2023). "China AI startup MiniMax raising over $250 million from Tencent-backed entity, others". Reuters. Archived from the original on 28 September 2023. Retrieved 8 September 2024.
- ^ a b c d e "MiniMax：中国AI伴侣巨头，全球市场的新势力". finance.sina.com.cn. 30 July 2024. Archived from the original on 8 September 2024. Retrieved 8 September 2024.
- ^ a b Dotson, Kyt (5 March 2024). "Report: Chinese AI startup MiniMax raises $600M at $2.5B valuation led by Alibaba". SiliconANGLE. Archived from the original on 8 September 2024. Retrieved 8 September 2024.
- ^ Huang, Raffaele (27 July 2024). "One of America's Hottest Entertainment Apps Is Chinese-Owned". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ Morrison, Ryan (2 September 2024). "Forget Sora — MiniMax is a new realistic AI video generator and it's seriously impressive". Tom's Guide. Archived from the original on 7 September 2024. Retrieved 8 September 2024.