MiniMax shares surge 25% as optimism over Chinese AI firms grows

[HONG KONG] MiniMax Group shares surged in Hong Kong, buoyed by growing investor confidence in the technology offered by China’s generative artificial intelligence (AI) startups.

The stock gained as much as 30 per cent, before closing up 25 per cent in the city’s shortened trading session on Monday (Feb 16). Shares of rival Zhipu – whose official name is Knowledge Atlas Technology JSC – advanced as much as 11 per cent before ending the day up 4.7 per cent. Both stocks have risen at least 300 per cent since their Hong Kong listings in January.

Shares in the two companies have been rocketing in recent sessions, bolstered by upgrades to their AI models as firms in the sector seek to grab additional user traffic during the approaching Chinese New Year holiday. MiniMax last week released an upgrade to its flagship model dubbed M2.5, which has been measured directly against Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6. 

“The model performance of MiniMax has improved significantly, particularly with version M2.5,” said Ke Yan, head of research at DZT Research in Singapore. “On several benchmarks, such as the software engineering SWE, M2.5 performs very close to Anthropic’s flagship Claude Opus 4.6 model.” BLOOMBERG