Produced by Leadar Finance | Written by Peng Cheng | Edited by Meng Shuai

On March 2, MiniMax, a highly anticipated star enterprise in the AI large model sector, presented its first annual financial results to the capital market since going public. Founded just over four years ago, the company has demonstrated astonishing "acceleration" in both revenue and losses.

Financial reports show that MiniMax's total revenue reached $79.038 million in 2025, a significant increase of 158.9% year-on-year. During the same period, the company's annual loss hit $1.872 billion (exceeding RMB 12.9 billion), nearly tripling year-on-year.

However, approximately $1.6 billion of this loss was attributed to fair value losses on financial liabilities. After excluding this and other factors, the company's adjusted net loss for the year was $251 million.

Further analysis of MiniMax's revenue sources reveals that its globalization strategy has become a core driver of growth. In 2025, regions outside mainland China contributed 73% of the company's revenue.

MiniMax's current success owes much to the exceptional leadership of its founder, Yan Junjie. Under his guidance, MiniMax has repeatedly attracted capital investment.

Backed by prominent investors such as Sequoia Capital, Hillhouse Capital, Alibaba, and Tencent, MiniMax has experienced rapid development. After listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange earlier this year, its market value briefly surpassed the HK$300 billion mark.

However, amidst this success, MiniMax faces numerous challenges. While its consumer-facing products continue to "burn money" to acquire users, its high-margin enterprise business is emerging as a second growth engine. Yet, copyright infringement lawsuits from Hollywood companies, a debt-to-asset ratio exceeding 340%, and ongoing funding pressures are testing the high valuation of this star company.

Revenue Growth and Losses Expand, Overseas Markets Contribute Over 70%

MiniMax's latest financial report reveals a distinct "duality" in its 2025 performance.

On one hand, the company's revenue growth momentum remains strong, with total annual revenue surging from $30.523 million in 2024 to $79.038 million in 2025, a 158.9% increase.

Simultaneously, the company's gross profit performance has been particularly impressive, soaring from $3.738 million in 2024 to $20.079 million in 2025, a 437.2% increase. The gross margin also improved from 12.2% in 2024 to 25.4% in 2025.

MiniMax explained in its financial report that the significant improvement in gross margin was primarily due to enhanced model and system efficiency, as well as continuous optimization of infrastructure allocation.

However, in stark contrast to its rapid revenue growth, MiniMax has struggled to achieve profitability.

Financial reports indicate that MiniMax's annual loss reached $1.872 billion in 2025, a staggering 302.3% increase from $465 million in 2024.

The substantial expansion of MiniMax's losses in 2025 was partly due to fair value losses on financial liabilities increasing from $214 million in 2024 to nearly $1.6 billion in 2025. MiniMax stated that the increase in company valuation led to significant remeasurement losses on preferred shares.

After adding back share-based payments, fair value losses on financial liabilities, and listing expenses for the year, MiniMax's adjusted net loss for 2025 was $251 million, nearly unchanged from $244 million in 2024.

On the expense side, MiniMax's sales and distribution expenses decreased by 40.3% from $87 million in 2024 to $52 million in 2025.

This decline was mainly because the company's AI-native product business is primarily driven by organic growth and word-of-mouth, resulting in reduced promotional spending. This suggests that MiniMax's product growth model may be shifting from traditional advertising-driven to organic and word-of-mouth-driven.

In 2025, MiniMax's research and development expenses were $253 million, a 33.8% year-on-year increase, significantly lower than the company's 158.9% revenue growth during the same period.

From a business segment perspective, both MiniMax's consumer and enterprise segments have shown positive development trends.

Benefiting from increased user engagement, stronger user willingness to pay for products, and continued promotion and commercialization of products like Hailuo AI, MiniMax's AI-native product revenue for consumers reached $53 million in 2025, a 143.4% year-on-year increase.

In the enterprise market, due to a significant increase in the number of paying customers, MiniMax's open platform and other enterprise services generated $26 million in revenue last year, a 197.8% year-on-year increase, indicating that it is becoming the company's second growth engine.

Entering 2026, MiniMax's business development has further accelerated. At an earnings briefing, company founder and CEO Yan Junjie revealed that the company's ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) exceeded $150 million in February 2026.

For open platform products targeting enterprise customers and individual developers, the number of new registered users in February 2026 reached more than four times that of December 2025.

The average daily Token consumption of the M2 series text model in February 2026 increased more than sixfold compared to December 2025.

Post-90s Entrepreneur from SenseTime Builds Billion-Dollar AI Giant

Founded in November 2021, MiniMax was established by Yan Junjie, a post-85s entrepreneur who rose from intern to Group Vice President at SenseTime and was included in the Forbes China 30 Under 30 list in 2019.

In late 2021, Yan Junjie left SenseTime shortly before its Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing and founded MiniMax in early 2022.

At the time of its founding, ChatGPT had not yet ignited the global AI wave. Nevertheless, Yan Junjie had already established a technological blueprint for "text, voice, and video" multimodality. This forward-looking judgment on foundational model pathways quickly attracted top-tier capital.

Tianyancha shows that during MiniMax's angel round financing, it attracted well-known investors such as Yunqi Capital, Hillhouse Ventures, IDG Capital, and miHoYo.

In subsequent financing rounds, MiniMax's shareholder base continued to expand, with industry giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, Xiaohongshu, and Sequoia China placing their bets.

On January 9, 2026, MiniMax officially listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the largest AI large model company by IPO scale in history.

On its debut, MiniMax's stock performance was impressive. It opened 42.67% higher at HK$235.4 per share, with a market value exceeding HK$71.9 billion, instantly attracting the attention of countless investors.

After listing, MiniMax's stock price surged to a high of HK$980 per share, with a market value exceeding HK$300 billion, even surpassing the market values of well-known internet giants JD.com and Kuaishou at one point.

However, as of the market close on March 4, MiniMax's stock price had declined from its peak, with its latest market value at HK$230.522 billion.

Facing Multiple Challenges, the Billion-Dollar AI Giant is Under Pressure

Despite MiniMax delivering impressive revenue growth in 2025, it still faces numerous challenges in supporting its current market value exceeding HK$230 billion.

The foremost challenge is the deep-seated test posed by its commercialization model. Financial reports show that in 2025, approximately 67% of the company's revenue came from consumer-facing AI-native products, but this segment has relatively low gross margins.

According to MiniMax's prospectus, in the first three quarters of 2025, the gross margin of its AI-native products was only 4.7%, while the gross margin of its open platform and other AI-based enterprise services during the same period was as high as 69.4%, forming a stark contrast.

Leadar Finance learned that as of the end of 2025, MiniMax had served customers in over 200 countries and regions, with 236 million individual users and 214,000 enterprise clients and developers.

Overseas markets have become a crucial pillar for MiniMax. In 2025, regions outside mainland China contributed 73% of the company's revenue, further increasing from 69.8% in 2024.

However, MiniMax acknowledged in its prospectus that the company faces risks related to international trade policies, geopolitics, and trade protection measures. Changes in international relations, trade and investment policies, and trade protection and investment restriction measures may adversely affect the company's business, financial condition, and operating results.

Notably, in September last year, several Hollywood companies, including Disney, filed a lawsuit against MiniMax in a California court, alleging that its video generation model "Hailuo AI" infringed copyrights during training, generation, and promotion, potentially facing claims of up to $75 million.

Some analysts point out that amid increasingly stringent global AI regulation, the copyright risks faced by content generation tools are becoming more prominent. This lawsuit may not only cause direct economic losses to MiniMax but also affect the company's future training costs and commercialization space in the multimodal content generation field.

In addition to external risks, MiniMax also faces certain funding pressures. Financial reports show that as of the end of 2025, MiniMax's debt-to-asset ratio was 343.3%, significantly increasing from 187.8% at the end of 2024.

Although the company's cash balance increased from $881 million at the end of 2024 to $1.05 billion, considering the annual R&D expenditure of $253 million and continuous investment in next-generation M3 and Hailuo 3 models, its long-term funding consumption pressure cannot be underestimated.

Furthermore, the rapid rise in labor costs has also imposed a considerable burden on MiniMax. Last year, the company's total employee compensation expenses were $84.3 million, a 54.4% increase from $54.6 million in 2024.

Notably, UBS predicted in a research report that MiniMax's compound revenue growth rate from 2025 to 2027 would exceed 200%. Morgan Stanley estimated that MiniMax's revenue would increase to approximately $700 million by 2027.

While these forecasts paint a promising development blueprint for the company, they also mean that the company must maintain doubled growth from a high base. Once growth slows or gross margin improvements fall short of expectations, the company's valuation may quickly contract.

In late February this year, the large model sector on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange experienced severe volatility, indicating the market's increasing sensitivity to technological iteration speed and commercialization capabilities.

Leadar Finance will continue to monitor MiniMax's subsequent developments.