MiniMax Group, a Hong Kong-listed Chinese AI company, has closed a $2 billion (HK$16 billion) financing round combining a share placement and a convertible bond sale, days after a stock rout tied to the expiry of its post-IPO lockup period.
What was announced
The company raised roughly HK$9.5 billion by placing 35.6 million new Class A shares at HK$268 apiece — about a 9.9% discount to its prior closing price — alongside HK$6.5 billion in zero-coupon convertible bonds due 2027, arranged by Morgan Stanley and UBS, according to multiple reports citing the company’s exchange filings. More than 100 institutional investors took part. MiniMax said 80% of the proceeds will go toward AI infrastructure and model research, with the rest split between global expansion of its “Harness” AI agent product and working capital.
The raise came after MiniMax shares fell roughly 80% from their peak market value, including double-digit drops on two consecutive days this week, as the six-month lockup following its January Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing expired and early investors began selling.
CEO forgoes pay, gives away equity
In an internal memo obtained by the South China Morning Post, founder, chairman and CTO Yan Junjie told employees he would take no salary “until the day we achieve” artificial general intelligence. He also pledged to transfer shares equal to 4% of the company’s total equity from his personal holdings to long-tenured staff over the next four years, and to set aside another 1% to fund open-source developer communities.
Why it matters
MiniMax, known for its Talkie chat app and Hailuo media-generation tools, is one of several Chinese AI firms — alongside Zhipu AI — that have gone public in Hong Kong this year to fund the capital-intensive race to build frontier models. The founder’s gesture underscores how hard Chinese AI labs are working to retain talent and reassure investors as compute costs climb and competition with US and rival Chinese labs intensifies.