MiniMax

Overview

Shanghai-based AI startup (founded 2021). Develops frontier multimodal models and consumer AI products. Best known in China for role-play and character AI products; internationally recognized since the MiniMax M3 release (June 1, 2026) for frontier-class coding and agent benchmarks.

As of mid-2026, MiniMax is one of the few Chinese AI startups to publish competitive results on Western coding/agent benchmarks (SWE-Bench Pro, BrowseComp), alongside Z.ai (GLM-5.2) and Alibaba / Qwen AI Lab (Qwen).

Key People

• Yang Zhilin — CEO and co-founder

Models & Products

• MiniMax Music 3.0 — Weights published August 13, 2026; ~11.1B text-to-music, five-minute songs from lyrics plus a structured caption at 32 kHz 16-bit stereo; MiniMax-Music3 Community License, no territorial exclusion
• MiniMax H3 — Released July 31, 2026; omni-modal video generation (Hailuo 3.0), 2K output with native stereo audio, $0.13 per generated second at 2K; H3-Base weights published August 3 under the MiniMax Community License, two of three checkpoints withheld
• MiniMax M3 — Released June 1, 2026; 428B MoE (23B active), 1M context, native multimodal, SWE-Bench Pro 59.0%, BrowseComp 83.5; open-weight on HuggingFace
• MiniMax M3 Pro (unconfirmed) — Reported 2026-07-08 by The Information (two unnamed sources): 2.7T total parameters, Q3 2026 open-source release target. Not confirmed by MiniMax as of 2026-07-21. → minimax#m3-pro-watch

Recent Activity

• 2026-08-17: The Music 3.0 contradiction resolves, and the licence went the other way from H3's — Two independent third-party accounts now agree that MiniMax published the weights on 2026-08-13: a ~11.1B text-to-music model taking lyrics with section tags plus a structured caption and returning a complete song of up to five minutes in a single generation, at 32 kHz, 16-bit stereo, distributed on Hugging Face, GitHub and ModelScope with ComfyUI support the same day. The MiniMax-Music3 Community License is reported to carry no territorial exclusion, and to permit downloading and running the model rather than only calling a hosted endpoint. MiniMax Music 3.0 was created on this basis — the four unknown rows the 08-13 entry declined to publish are now three known values and one that is genuinely unknown. Why it matters: the 08-13 entry said the licence, not the announcement, was the fact worth waiting for, and it resolves against the pattern — MiniMax H3 excludes the US, EU, UK and South Korea by territory clause; this one, eleven days later from the same company, excludes nobody. So "open weights from MiniMax" is not one policy but a per-release decision, which is why this wiki records the licence per model rather than per vendor. Still missing, and unchanged since 08-13: no controlled listening benchmark from anyone, and no explanation of the 2026-07-16 date a model directory gives — both kept in the model page's ## Conflicting Reports. → MiniMax Music 3.0 (new), Open-Weights Policy Fight (source) (MarkTechPost) (NYU Shanghai RITS)

• 2026-08-13: Music 3.0 announced as open weights, and two sources disagree about what that means — MiniMax published a post titled "MiniMax Music 3.0: Next-Generation Open-Weights, Production-Ready & Versatile Music Model", with repositories reported on Hugging Face, GitHub and ModelScope, alongside a post from its official account; an r/LocalLLaMA thread the same day is titled "MiniMax-Music3 released!". Against that, a third-party model directory states Music 3.0 was released 2026-07-16 and is "a hosted MiniMax model rather than a downloadable open-weight release", and adds that MiniMax has published no controlled listening benchmark for it. Nothing read distinguishes whether open weights followed a July hosted launch or whether these are two artefacts. No model page was created — a page whose release date, licence and weights availability are all contested would be four unknown rows and a contradiction. Why it matters: "open weights" from this vendor already means something narrower than the phrase — the H3 Community License excludes the US, EU, UK and South Korea from its Applicable Territory — so the licence, not the announcement, is the fact worth waiting for. → MiniMax H3, Open-Weights Policy Fight (source) (MiniMax) (r/LocalLLaMA)

• 2026-08-03: H3 weights published — one checkpoint of three, and four jurisdictions excluded by licence — MiniMax published H3-Base at MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-H3 on Hugging Face three days after launch, keeping the "coming days" promise. What shipped is 33.1B parameters generating 768p; H3-Context-IR and H3-Regenerate-2K were withheld, so the 1440p output the model was launched on cannot be reproduced locally — MiniMax's own "Full 2K Workflow" pairs a local H3-Base with Open Platform API calls for the two missing modules. Download is 42.5 GB across two checkpoints. The MiniMax Community License allows free commercial use below $20M revenue with UI attribution, and excludes the United States, European Union, United Kingdom and South Korea by territory, citing generative-video regulation in those jurisdictions; affected organisations may apply for a formal licence. → MiniMax H3, Open-Weights Policy Fight (source)

• 2026-07-31: MiniMax H3 released — omni-modal video generation with native stereo audio — a general-purpose model reading text, images, video and audio in one context and returning video with stereo sound, at native 1440p (2K), 4–15 seconds, 24 fps. MiniMax states it set aside the Hailuo-02 architecture: the new H3-Omni Transformer separates understanding and generation workloads during training because multimodal context tripled sequence-length variance, raising end-to-end training throughput nearly 30%. Live in the platform API as MiniMax-H3 and in the consumer Hailuo AI app, at $0.13 per generated second at 2K. Marketed as open-weight, with weights promised "in the coming days" — none had shipped one day after launch, which is the same pattern as Alibaba / Qwen AI Lab's Qwen 3.8 announcement and is recorded as an intent rather than a release. → MiniMax H3 (source)

• 2026-07-08: M3 Pro — 2.7T-parameter open-source model reported for Q3 2026 {#m3-pro-watch} — The Information (July 8, Juro Osawa, two unnamed sources) reported that MiniMax is planning to release an open-source model codenamed M3 Pro with 2.7 trillion total parameters, targeting a Q3 2026 open-source release. Not confirmed by MiniMax as of July 21, 2026. ⚠️ Caveats: single-sourced; MiniMax has not confirmed name, size, or date; nothing is downloadable; release tied to China's ongoing policy discussions around open-source AI — date can slip; active parameters and context window unknown. If accurate: would be the largest open-weight model by total parameter count (vs. Kimi K3 at 2.8T, DeepSeek V4 at 1.6T). Architecture assumed MoE (M3 is MoE with 23B active / 428B total — 6.3× scale-up). Coverage: The Information, AI Weekly, Silicon Report. → (source) (The Information)

• 2026-07-17: MiniMax M3 featured at WAIC 2026 — MiniMax's M3 model was a top-billed product at the World AI Conference in Shanghai (July 17-20), the largest AI conference in China. Xi Jinping gave the opening keynote. M3 represents MiniMax's entry into the global frontier model conversation. (source)

• 2026-06-01: MiniMax M3 released — Launched June 1, 2026 (captured July 17 via WAIC 2026 coverage). See MiniMax M3. (source)

Strategic Position

• Occupies the "Chinese frontier open-weight" tier alongside Qwen (Alibaba) and GLM (Z.ai)
• Unlike those labs, MiniMax is independent (not a major tech conglomerate subsidiary), backed by VC
• M3's BrowseComp 83.5 (beats Claude Opus 4.7 at 79.3) puts it in the global agent conversation
• Primarily serves Chinese consumer market; expanding globally via API access in English
• Open-weight strategy (HuggingFace) distinguishes it from closed labs

Related

• MiniMax M3 — primary model
• Z.ai — comparable Chinese open-weight frontier lab (GLM-5.2)
• Alibaba / Qwen AI Lab — Qwen lab; different tier (larger conglomerate)
• Agents (LLM Agents) — M3's agent benchmark performance (BrowseComp, OSWorld)