---
title: "Anthropic's $16.3 billion half-year meets MiniMax's $0.15 rate card"
description: "MiniMax, named in Anthropic's distillation evidence, sells a model tied for fourth among open weights at about a fifteenth of Kimi's token price. Anthropic's Nasdaq debut, with no price range set, could trade as soon as November 16 and will set the multiple Chinese AI is graded on."
publisher: "The Inference"
section: "Model"
published: 2026-10-30T14:49:27.437Z
modified: 2026-10-30T14:49:27.437Z
canonical: https://theinference.org/article/anthropic-s-16-3-billion-half-year-meets-minimax-s-0-15-rate-card
language: en
keywords: "Anthropic, MiniMax, IPO, AI Pricing, Open Models, China AI"
---

# Anthropic's $16.3 billion half-year meets MiniMax's $0.15 rate card

> MiniMax, named in Anthropic's distillation evidence, sells a model tied for fourth among open weights at about a fifteenth of Kimi's token price. Anthropic's Nasdaq debut, with no price range set, could trade as soon as November 16 and will set the multiple Chinese AI is graded on.

## A 15-fold gap on the price list

MiniMax, a Shanghai AI lab listed on the Hong Kong exchange since January 9, [prices its model M3.1 Flash at $0.15 per million input tokens, $0.60 for output and $0.015 for cached input](https://platform.minimax.io/docs/pricing/overview) [1]. [Anthropic](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/anthropic), maker of the Claude models, could begin trading on Nasdaq as soon as November 16, and the price it wins will grade a sector where Z.AI and MiniMax, the two Hong Kong-listed Chinese labs, together earned one sixty-third of Anthropic's first-half sales [2][3].

Moonshot AI, the Chinese lab behind the Kimi models, [lists Kimi K3.1 Pro at $2.00 per million input tokens and $10.00 for output](https://platform.kimi.ai/docs/pricing/chat) [4]. On an uncached blend of three input tokens to one output token, that is $4.00 per million against MiniMax's $0.2625, about 15 times [5]. In [one 43-question run reported on October 26 by OrcaRouter](https://www.neoteo.com/en/kimi-vs-minimax-api-pricing-token-rates-and-task-costs), a benchmarking service, MiniMax answered 41 correctly for $4.09; Kimi answered 42 for $13.47 [5].

*Chart: **Kimi's published token rates run 13 to 17 times MiniMax's** Column chart comparing published API rates: MiniMax M3.1 Flash at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 for output, Kimi K3.1 Pro at $2.00 for input and $10.00 for output.*

*Published rate-card prices per million tokens from each lab's API pricing page, uncached. Source: MiniMax and Kimi (Moonshot AI) pricing pages via NeoTeo, October 30, 2026. [1][4][5]*

## The capability is cheap, and Anthropic says some of it was taken

In February, Anthropic accused MiniMax and two other Chinese AI labs, [DeepSeek](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/deepseek) and Moonshot, of sending more than 16 million requests to Claude through more than 24,000 fraudulent accounts to train their own models, a practice called distillation: prompt a stronger model, then train on its answers [6].

Anthropic's September threat report named seven Chinese labs, led by [Alibaba](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/alibaba) with about 151 million requests, and in mid-October it said tighter identity checks had cut the harvest by 90 to 99 percent [6]. On October 29, The Information, a tech-news outlet, [reported that DeepSeek and Moonshot then distilled OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra](https://www.trendingtopics.eu/deepseek-moonshot-gpt-6-astra-distillation/); the companies did not comment, Beijing rejects the claims, and none is independently verified [6].

## The prospectus that prices the quarrel

[Anthropic's prospectus (the S-1 filing)](https://cryptobriefing.com/anthropic-ipo-filing-chinese-ai-revenue-gap/), public since October 26, shows $16.3 billion of first-half revenue; its $80.7 billion net loss is mostly accounting on convertible notes [7]. Compute and infrastructure costs nearly quadrupled to $8.9 billion, against $1.6 billion of adjusted operating profit [3].

*Chart: **Compute costs near $9 billion left a $1.6 billion adjusted operating profit** Column chart of Anthropic's first half of 2026: $16.3 billion of revenue, $8.9 billion of compute and infrastructure costs and $1.6 billion of adjusted operating profit.*

*Anthropic's S-1 filing figures for the first half of 2026. The $80.7 billion net loss is mostly accounting on convertible notes. Source: Crypto Briefing, October 28, 2026. [3][7]*

Reuters Breakingviews puts that half-year revenue at 63 times Z.AI and MiniMax combined, and MiniMax's own 2025 accounts show $79 million of revenue against a $1.87 billion loss [3][8]. Rhodium Group, a research group, [reckons all Chinese models together earn about a tenth of OpenAI and Anthropic](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/17/chinas-ai-models-make-only-10percent-of-us-leaders-revenue-rhodium.html), and Moonshot has reportedly filed confidentially for a Hong Kong listing of its own [9].

No price range is set. Securities and Exchange Commission rules allow a roadshow from November 10, with November 16 the earliest first trade [2]. The Inference has [covered the listing](https://theinference.org/article/anthropic-pitches-a-2-trillion-ipo-over-the-pentagon-s-standing-removal-order) since September; what is new this week is the missing range, the 63-times revenue gap and a benchmark rebuilt around private tests [2].

## What the IPO price decides

Artificial Analysis, a benchmarking service, [rebuilt its Intelligence Index around private test questions](https://artificialanalysis.ai/) on October 27, and Chinese scores fell hard: Kimi K3.1 Pro dropped from 55 to 46, still the best open-weight score even though Moonshot has yet to post the downloadable files [6][11]. MiniMax's M3.1 Flash, at 29, ties for fourth among open weights [10].

*Chart: **Seventeen points behind Kimi on the rebuilt index, at a fifteenth of the token price** Bar chart of Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5 scores: Claude Opus 5.5 at 58, GPT-6 Astra at 57, Kimi K3.1 Pro at 46, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at 32 and MiniMax M3.1 Flash at 29, with MiniMax highlighted.*

*Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5, announced October 27, 2026, and rebuilt around private test questions; higher is better. Blended cost is the uncached 3:1 input-to-output mix from each lab's published rate card. [5][6][10][11]*

A debut near the $1.7 trillion to $2 trillion that pre-IPO futures imply [7] would put a public multiple on the lead this rate card attacks; a stumble like [SpaceX](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/spacex), which went public in June and [now trades below its $150 opening price](https://cryptobriefing.com/spacex-stock-struggles-post-ipo-raising-concerns-for-anthropics-upcoming-listing/) [12][2], would hand the cost story to the cheap labs. The tell is the price range, due in an updated filing before the roadshow [2]. The IPO will set the price of building frontier models; the rate card has already set the price of copying them.

## Takeaway

MiniMax sells a model tied for fourth among open weights at roughly a fifteenth of Kimi's blended token price, and Anthropic's first Nasdaq trade, as soon as November 16, sets the multiple Chinese AI gets graded on.

## Sources

1. [MiniMax API Docs, "Pricing Overview," accessed 30 October 2026](https://platform.minimax.io/docs/pricing/overview)
2. [Yahoo Finance via MSN, "Anthropic's IPO could start trading as soon as Nov. 16, here's the road from filing to first trade," 28 October 2026](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/general/anthropic-s-ipo-could-start-trading-as-soon-as-nov-16-here-s-the-road-from-filing-to-first-trade/ar-AA2gbcfF)
3. [Crypto Briefing, "Anthropic's IPO filing highlights revenue gap with Chinese AI rivals," 28 October 2026](https://cryptobriefing.com/anthropic-ipo-filing-chinese-ai-revenue-gap/)
4. [Kimi API Platform (Moonshot AI), "Model Inference Pricing," accessed 30 October 2026](https://platform.kimi.ai/docs/pricing/chat)
5. [NeoTeo, "Kimi vs. MiniMax API pricing: token rates and task costs," 30 October 2026](https://www.neoteo.com/en/kimi-vs-minimax-api-pricing-token-rates-and-task-costs)
6. [Trending Topics, "DeepSeek and Moonshot Reportedly Copied OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra," 30 October 2026](https://www.trendingtopics.eu/deepseek-moonshot-gpt-6-astra-distillation/)
7. [Crypto Briefing, "Anthropic perps drop 7% after public listing filing," 30 October 2026](https://cryptobriefing.com/anthropic-perps-drop-after-s1-filing/)
8. [Wikipedia, "MiniMax Group," accessed 30 October 2026](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniMax_Group)
9. [CNBC, "OpenAI and Anthropic are making 10 times more revenue than all Chinese AI models combined, research group Rhodium says," 17 September 2026](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/17/chinas-ai-models-make-only-10percent-of-us-leaders-revenue-rhodium.html)
10. [Trending Topics, "Mistral Large 4 Goes Open Weight, Lands Ahead of Meta but Behind China," 30 October 2026](https://www.trendingtopics.eu/mistral-large-4-open-weights-artificial-analysis-meta-china-ranking/)
11. [Artificial Analysis, homepage and Intelligence Index v5 leaderboard, accessed 30 October 2026](https://artificialanalysis.ai/)
12. [Crypto Briefing, "SpaceX stock struggles post-IPO, raising concerns for Anthropic's upcoming listing," 30 October 2026](https://cryptobriefing.com/spacex-stock-struggles-post-ipo-raising-concerns-for-anthropics-upcoming-listing/)


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Anthropic's $16.3 billion half-year meets MiniMax's $0.15 rate card — The Inference. Canonical: https://theinference.org/article/anthropic-s-16-3-billion-half-year-meets-minimax-s-0-15-rate-card