MiniMax Share Price Shocks Hong Kong: The Startup That Suddenly Became Bigger Than Baidu

Observing a company that has only been on the public market for two months suddenly trade at a valuation that surpasses one of China’s original internet pillars is peculiar. This month, MiniMax experienced that. The stock closed yesterday at HKD 1,141 in Hong Kong, giving the Shanghai-based AI company a market capitalization of about USD 45 billion following a 24 percent increase on March 9 and another 22 percent the following day.

In contrast, Baidu is valued at HKD 338.3 billion. Take a moment to consider that. On paper, a business that made roughly USD 79 million last year is now worth more than one that makes more than USD 18 billion.

You’ll hear the name OpenClaw at some point if you stroll past any sizable tech office in Shanghai these days. It now serves as a sort of abbreviation for the new generation of autonomous AI agents, which are programs that operate independently and accomplish tasks without assistance. One of the model providers that are officially supported is MiniMax, which launched MaxClaw, a cloud-based assistant based on that framework, on February 27. Almost instantly, investors, who were always eager for the next story, jumped on board.

It’s worth stopping to observe the OpenClaw frenzy. In just a few months, the open-source project—which was developed by Austrian programmer Peter Steinberger, who was previously more well-known in iOS developer circles—went from a quiet release to a worldwide phenomenon.

It was probably the most significant software release ever, according to Jensen Huang of Nvidia, who isn’t exactly prone to understatement but also isn’t careless with praise. Markets were moved by that one sentence. It’s possible that some of the excitement surrounding MiniMax is actually just excitement about OpenClaw dressed differently.

Even so, it is hard to ignore the numbers. 618 times the price-to-sales ratio. For comparison, OpenAI is trading at a price that is closer to 18. An investor quoted by Yicai suggested that even 50 times revenue would feel aggressive. Analysts believe that the market is paying for a future that has not yet materialized and may never do so in the way that people have envisioned. MiniMax’s revenue jumped 159 percent last year, which is real growth, but the adjusted net loss of USD 251 million tells the other half of the story.

The company itself has a fascinating history. Founded in late 2021 by computer vision researchers who had left SenseTime, MiniMax got early backing from MiHoYo, the gaming studio behind Genshin Impact — an unusual pairing that, looking back, hinted at where the firm’s instincts would go.

With about 11 million monthly active users, Talkie, their AI character app, quietly rose to the top of the U.S. entertainment app download rankings in 2024. Hailuo AI followed, then a steady drumbeat of model releases: ABAB 6.5, MiniMax-01, Speech-02, and most recently M2.7 in March.

Yan Junjie, the founder, interned at Baidu’s Institute of Deep Learning back in 2014. He was one of only eight people in China to win the second Baidu Scholarship. There’s a small poetic weight in that, watching his company briefly overtake the firm that once paid him CNY 200,000 to keep researching. It’s difficult to ignore the symmetry.

Whether the MiniMax share price holds at these levels is genuinely unclear. Years ago, Tesla encountered similar skepticism and largely disproved it. Many other high-flyers didn’t. Which camp this one ends up in will likely depend on what ships from the lab in the coming quarters.