--- title: "MiniMax claims Space Bunny and silently reroutes subscribers onto it the same day" description: "On October 19, 2026 MiniMax claimed Space Bunny, the anonymous OpenRouter chart-topper, and in the same hours began routing every M2.5 and M2.7 subscription call to M3.1 Flash: a model that cannot stop thinking, defaults to its most expensive effort setting, and now bills at half M3's standard rate. For a listed lab whose API line is 63 percent of revenue, consumption per subscriber is the number to watch." publisher: "The Inference" section: "Markets" published: 2026-10-19T16:16:22.772Z modified: 2026-10-19T16:16:22.772Z canonical: https://theinference.org/article/minimax-claims-space-bunny-and-silently-reroutes-subscribers-onto-it-the-same-day language: en keywords: "MiniMax, AI Pricing, Model Releases, OpenRouter, API Economics" --- # MiniMax claims Space Bunny and silently reroutes subscribers onto it the same day > On October 19, 2026 MiniMax claimed Space Bunny, the anonymous OpenRouter chart-topper, and in the same hours began routing every M2.5 and M2.7 subscription call to M3.1 Flash: a model that cannot stop thinking, defaults to its most expensive effort setting, and now bills at half M3's standard rate. For a listed lab whose API line is 63 percent of revenue, consumption per subscriber is the number to watch. On the afternoon of October 19, 2026, MiniMax's official account posted a short video captioned "Welcome back, Space Bunny" [1][2]. Space Bunny is the anonymous model that turned up in late September and reached number one in daily token volume on OpenRouter, a model marketplace, and on OpenCode, an open-source coding tool, within three days, holding the top three alongside [DeepSeek](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/deepseek)'s V4.1 Flash and [GLM 5.3 Flash from Z.ai](https://theinference.org/article/amazon-and-openai-resell-china-s-glm-5-3-and-kimi-k3-minimax-is-the-cheapest-chinese-lab-at-13-billion) [1]. [MiniMax has confirmed the bunny was an early build of M3.1 Flash, a stealth run that processed more than 200 trillion tokens](https://www.marktechpost.com/2026/10/19/minimax-m3-1-flash-release/) [3]. ## The switch no one's code asked for The same date is stamped on a second, quieter document. From October 19, 2026, requests to M2.5 and M2.7 under MiniMax's M Plan and Token Plan subscriptions route automatically to M3.1 Flash; the old names keep working, allowances are unchanged, and [both families stop entirely on November 18, 2026](https://platform.minimax.io/docs/faq/models) [4]. Nothing returns an error. The request still succeeds; the model answering it is one nobody chose. On the new model thinking cannot be switched off: a disabled flag returns HTTP 400 with error code 2013, an unset effort field defaults to max, and [thinking tokens draw from the same allowance](https://www.orcarouter.ai/blog/minimax-m3-1-flash-m2-7-migration) [7]. Request ceilings fall from 500 to 200 a minute [8]. ## A price row lands by afternoon OrcaRouter, a model-routing service that resells API access, reported in the morning that MiniMax's commercial pages carried no per-token price for M3.1 Flash and no release note at all [8]. Both were on the pages by the afternoon. [The pricing table now lists M3.1 Flash at $0.15 input and $0.60 output per million tokens](https://platform.minimax.io/docs/pricing/overview), half the $0.30 and $1.20 MiniMax charges for M3 up to 512k input, which doubles to $0.60 and $2.40 above it [5]. [A release note dated today calls it an ultra-efficient open-weight model](https://platform.minimax.io/docs/release-notes/models) [6], with weights promised for October 23 and the license still undisclosed [3]. Pay-as-you-go buyers get a halved rate. Subscribers get a hotter meter: OrcaRouter's arithmetic, offered strictly as arithmetic, puts a 40,000-request-a-day workload at roughly 2.9 billion extra thinking tokens a month on the default, about $3,400 at M3's old output rate [7]. *Chart: **M3.1 Flash output tokens cost half M3's standard rate** Bar chart of MiniMax pay-as-you-go output prices: M3.1 Flash at $0.60 per million tokens, M3 at $1.20 up to 512k input and $2.40 above* *Pay-as-you-go output price per million tokens from MiniMax's pricing table as published on October 19, 2026; input rates run $0.15 for M3.1 Flash against $0.30 for M3. [3][5][7]* ## The token math is the equity story MiniMax Group, listed in Hong Kong as HKEX: 00100 [9], has turned itself into an API business. [First-half 2026 revenue was $116.6 million, up 283.1 percent](https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/minimax-announces-first-half-2026-105100890.html), and the Open Platform line, API calls plus subscriptions, grew 703.1 percent to $73.9 million, 63.4 percent of the total [9]. Token consumption reached 20 times its January level by July, per co-founder and chief executive Yan Junjie [9]. A migration that raises what each subscriber consumes against a fixed seat price lands squarely on that line. MiniMax's defense is real: the schedule is dated, pay-as-you-go users keep the old models until November 18 [4], and the per-token price halved [5]. It does not answer why the most expensive effort setting is the one nobody has to choose. *Chart: **MiniMax's API line overtook its consumer apps in the first half of 2026** Column chart comparing MiniMax's Open Platform and AI-native product revenue across H1 2025 and H1 2026* *Six months to June 30, US$ millions, from MiniMax's interim results: the Open Platform line, API calls plus subscriptions, grew from $9.2 million to $73.9 million, reaching 63.4 percent of revenue, while AI-native products grew from $21.2 million to $42.6 million. [9]* ## What to watch Weights land October 23, M2.5 and M2.7 stop answering on November 18, and every benchmark so far is vendor-reported, with no independent score attached [3][4]. No disclosure yet shows whether the max-effort default lifts what each subscriber burns. The number to watch is consumption per subscriber, and the next interim report is where it shows. ## Takeaway MiniMax claimed the anonymous OpenRouter chart-topper Space Bunny as an early M3.1 Flash, and on the same day began silently routing every M2.5 and M2.7 subscription call to a model with thinking locked on, effort defaulted to max and a lower pay-as-you-go price. With the API line at 63 percent of revenue, consumption per subscriber is the number that moves the stock. ## Sources 1. [Eastmoney (Jiemian News), "MiniMax认领Space Bunny，M3.1 Flash即将发布", 19 October 2026](https://finance.eastmoney.com/a/202610193900017494.html) 2. [KuCoin News (ChainCatcher), "MiniMax Officially Announces the Space Bunny Model, with a New Version Coming Soon", 19 October 2026](https://www.kucoin.com/news/flash/minimax-officially-claims-space-bunny-model-new-version-to-be-released-soon) 3. [MarkTechPost, "MiniMax Just Launched M3.1 Flash: 428B MoE Agentic Model at $0.15/M Input", 19 October 2026](https://www.marktechpost.com/2026/10/19/minimax-m3-1-flash-release/) 4. [MiniMax API Docs, Model List including M2.5 and M2.7 Retirement Notice, fetched 19 October 2026](https://platform.minimax.io/docs/faq/models) 5. [MiniMax API Docs, Pricing Overview, fetched 19 October 2026](https://platform.minimax.io/docs/pricing/overview) 6. [MiniMax API Docs, Model Release Notes, fetched 19 October 2026](https://platform.minimax.io/docs/release-notes/models) 7. [OrcaRouter, "MiniMax-M3.1-Flash Is Now Answering Your M2.7 Calls: What Changed on October 19", 19 October 2026](https://www.orcarouter.ai/blog/minimax-m3-1-flash-m2-7-migration) 8. [OrcaRouter, "MiniMax-M3.1-Flash Is in Every Doc and in No Price Row", 19 October 2026](https://www.orcarouter.ai/blog/minimax-m3-1-flash-release-date) 9. [PRNewswire via Yahoo Finance, "MiniMax Announces First Half 2026 Financial Results", 26 August 2026](https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/minimax-announces-first-half-2026-105100890.html) --- MiniMax claims Space Bunny and silently reroutes subscribers onto it the same day — The Inference. Canonical: https://theinference.org/article/minimax-claims-space-bunny-and-silently-reroutes-subscribers-onto-it-the-same-day