MiniMax's public buyers paid HK$1,330. New money just got in at HK$268.

The Chinese AI lab nearly quadrupled first-half revenue and still widened its adjusted loss 111% to $293 million. This week it closed at HK$285.4, about 79% below its peak, sold off on a rival's data scandal while state-backed platforms became its best customers.

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Vincent JiangSeptember 27, 2026 · 2 min read

Exchange Square in Central, Hong Kong, home of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, photographed from below against a blue sky — Exchange Square, home of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, where MiniMax listed and sold new shares at HK$268 in July.

MiniMax's public buyers paid HK$1,330. New money just got in at HK$268. — slide 1 — Exchange Square, home of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, where MiniMax listed and sold new shares at HK$268 in July.

Punished for a rival's mistake

On a day the Hang Seng added about 0.7%, MiniMax closed down 5.8% at HK$285.4, sold off with the Chinese AI sector after users showed that rival Z.ai's ZCode assistant had been uploading entire local code repositories to an Alibaba Cloud server without their consent ²⁶. Z.ai disabled the default-on indexing feature and open-sourced the tool on 21 September 2026 ⁶. MiniMax committed no offense here. Its holders paid anyway: that close sits roughly 79% below the HK$1,330 post-IPO high ¹².

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange trading hall with rows of terminals and the Hang Seng quotation board overhead — The Hong Kong Stock Exchange trading hall in 2005, with the Hang Seng Index board overhead. MiniMax shares now trade at the exchange, about 79% below their post-IPO peak. · WiNG

The stock price contradicts the filings

First-half revenue was $116.6 million, up 283.1% and already 1.5 times all of 2025, with gross margin up from 12.1% to 17.9% ¹⁹. The adjusted net loss widened 111.2% to $293 million as research spending ran $297 million ¹. In July, MiniMax sold 35.6 million new shares at HK$268, a 9.9% discount, alongside HK$6.5 billion of convertible notes, $2.05 billion in all ³. New money bought at HK$268 the company old money paid HK$1,330 for.

MiniMax peaked at HK$1,330 and sold new shares at HK$268

Share price mark
Estimate

Data

	Share price mark
Post-IPO peak, March	HK$1,330
Placement price, 10 July (estimate)	HK$268
Close, 21 September	HK$298
Close, Z.ai sell-off	HK$285.4

HK dollars per Class A share. The peak is the post-IPO high, the placement is the 10 July 2026 new-share price, and the last two marks are September closes including the Z.ai-contagion session. Sources: 36Kr; TrustFinance News; Reuters.^1,2,3

Customers with budgets changed the mix

Open-platform and enterprise revenue rose 703.1% to $73.9 million, going from 30.3% to 63.4% of the total, and business customers supplied about 80% of August ARR ¹⁸. The beneficiaries are states and enterprises. Saudi Arabia's PIF-backed HUMAIN unveiled humain-m3 on 3 September 2026, a 428-billion-parameter model on the MiniMax M3 lineage pre-trained on more than a trillion Arabic tokens, with a company-claimed sweep of seven Arabic benchmarks ⁷. Singapore's SkillsFuture listed three MiniMax products alongside ChatGPT Plus and Google AI Pro ¹. Management says token consumption in July ran 20 times January's level ¹.

B-end went from a third of revenue to about 80% of ARR in a year

B-end share
Estimate

Data

	B-end share
H1 2025 revenue	30.3%
H1 2026 revenue	63.4%
August 2026 ARR (estimate)	80%

Share of revenue from open-platform and enterprise services (H1 2025 and H1 2026, as reported) and management's approximate share of August 2026 ARR, an estimate. Sources: 36Kr; TechNode.^1,8

The bull case has evidence too

Alibaba and miHoYo back the company, and more than 80% of pre-IPO and cornerstone holders have pledged to keep holding ¹. H3, the July video model, ranks first in video editing on Artificial Analysis at a third of flagship pricing ¹. Every model win has moved the stock by double digits within days ¹.

M3.1 will settle the question

JPMorgan went Neutral in June 2026 on M3's missing pricing power, then cut its target twice in one July week while the stock slid as much as 18% on the raise and a 46% lock-up expiry ¹⁴⁵. M3 sells at $0.22 per million tokens against Zhipu's GLM-5.1 at $0.90, and was marked down by half a week after its June launch ⁵⁴. Founder Yan Junjie promised M3.1 and a roughly 3-trillion-parameter M3 Pro on the 26 August call; neither has shipped ¹. The next release either restores the price tag or confirms the discount rack.

How this brief was made

01Gathered & sourced316 channels · 1,464 articles▾

Agents swept 316 channels and ingested 1,464 articles, then de-duplicated and ranked them for signal.

02Verified & cross-validated9 claims · 18 data feeds▾

Every one of 9 load-bearing claims was checked against primary sources, with 18 live data feeds reconciling the figures and charts.

03Reviewed & edited1 human editor▾

One editor read the draft against the evidence, tuned the framing, and signed off before it shipped.

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MiniMax's public buyers paid HK$1,330. New money just got in at HK$268.

Punished for a rival's mistake

The stock price contradicts the filings

Customers with budgets changed the mix

The bull case has evidence too

M3.1 will settle the question

Deepdive

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