AI firm MiniMax prepares for mainland China listing after Hong Kong shares surge

MiniMax Group, the Chinese artificial intelligence model company, has officially kicked off plans to sell shares in mainland China. This offers onshore investors access to AI players beyond chipmakers and completes a dual-listing status in addition to Hong Kong. The Shanghai-headquartered company signed an agreement with Citic Securities on Friday, hiring the brokerage to help prepare for a sale of yuan-denominated shares. While other details on the listing are scant, it is widely expected that MiniMax will trade on the Star Market, a technology-heavy board dominated by China’s leading AI chipmakers under the Shanghai Stock Exchange. MiniMax is the latest AI firm to tap funding on China’s onshore stock markets as global investors ramp up their bets on tech companies. This follows hyperscalers’ investments in AI infrastructure gaining further momentum and the easing of Middle East tensions boosting the appeal of risk assets. ChangXin Memory Technologies had its 29.5 billion yuan (US$4.4 billion) first-time stock sale approved by the Shanghai exchange last week, while the bourse is set to review the initial public offering (IPO) application by Unitree Robotics on June 1. Global investors’ interest in AI stocks is at an all-time high. The Nasdaq-100 index rose to a record on Friday and markets in South Korea and Taiwan – which are heavily weighted towards memory chipmakers and semiconductor manufacturers – also hit all-time highs last week. The Star Market 50 index hit a record last week, taking its gain this year to about 30 per cent. Shares of MiniMax rose 0.4 per cent to HK$840 in the city on Friday, valuing the company at HK$264 billion (US$33.7 billion). The stock has jumped 400 per cent since its IPO in January. Its peer, Knowledge Atlas Technology (also known as Zhipu but rebranded in 2025 as Z.ai), is ahead of MiniMax in the domestic listing. Beijing-based Zhipu hired Guotai Haitong Securities and China International Capital Corp in February as joint sponsors to prepare for the stock sale. MiniMax and Zhipu are set to be added to the Hang Seng Tech Index in June, which Morgan Stanley said would spur an inflow of as much as US$1.75 billion. The reshuffle may help reverse the gauge’s underperformance this year. This performance diverges from the AI trade due to the dominance of Chinese e-commerce platforms struggling with weakening consumer spending. Founded in 2021, MiniMax is known for its M-series large language models and popular consumer applications, including video-generation tool Hailuo AI. Its latest flagship MiniMax M2.7 model currently ranks eighth among open-weight models on the Artificial Analysis benchmark, trailing domestic rivals Moonshot AI, Xiaomi, DeepSeek and Zhipu AI. While MiniMax’s revenue surged nearly 160 per cent year on year to US$79 million in 2025, annual losses widened to US$1.87 billion, largely due to fair-value changes on financial liabilities. The company said last week that its base of clients and developers surged fivefold from half a year ago to more than 1 million.