A Shanghai AI company founded December 2021. Listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on January 9, 2026, opening with shares doubling to a market cap near HK$345. Builds multimodal foundation models plus consumer apps.
The portfolio: the M2 family of text models (flagship M2.7, released March 18, 2026), Hailuo video generation (covered on the Hailuo page), Speech 2.6 for voice (covered on MiniMax Speech), Music 2.6 for music, and the Talkie companion app.
System Verdict
Pick MiniMax if the work is voice, video, or companion apps where per-call cost matters more than peak English quality. The M2 family, Speech 2.6, and Hailuo video sit under one token plan, which reduces integration overhead for multi-modal products.
Skip it for English-first reasoning. M2.7 trails Claude Opus 4.7 and OpenAI frontier models on agentic coding, long-form coherence, and premise-testing tasks. US-facing production workloads with compliance requirements should evaluate data residency before committing.
The Talkie app is the consumer flagship. 11M monthly active users by mid-2024. Character-chat is the use case, not general assistant. Copyright litigation from entertainment studios over celebrity simulations is ongoing.
Key Facts
| Founded | December 2021, Shanghai |
| Public | Hong Kong Stock Exchange, January 9, 2026 |
| Flagship text model | M2.7 (March 18, 2026), 205K context |
| M2.7 API price | $0.30 in / $1.20 out per 1M tokens |
| Budget text model | M2.5 at $0.118 in / $0.95 out per 1M tokens |
| Speech | Speech 2.6, 40 languages, real-time |
| Video | Hailuo 2.3 at $0.28 per 6s clip (768P) |
| Music | Music 2.6 |
| Consumer apps | MiniMax agent (minimax.io), Talkie (talkie-ai.com) |
| Talkie MAU | ~11 million (mid-2024), majority US-based |
What it actually is
Three product lines under one token plan.
Developer API. The M2 text family plus Speech 2.6, Music 2.6, and Hailuo video. Multimodal under one platform at platform.minimax.io.
MiniMax consumer agent. An assistant interface at minimax.io for general work and daily tasks. Free tier with paid upgrades.
Talkie. A character-chat and companion app at talkie-ai.com. 11M MAU mid-2024. Custom characters and persona chat. Majority-US user base.
When to pick MiniMax
- Multimodal apps that need cheap token rates. M2.5 at $0.118 input is one of the lowest multimodal APIs available.
- Voice app builders. Speech 2.6 in 40 languages with voice cloning at $0.03-$0.05 per 1K chars undercuts ElevenLabs by 80%+.
- Companion-chat products. Talkie proves the consumer fit. The underlying models are tuned for character persona work.
- Cost-first prototyping. Running benchmarks on M2.5 before graduating to M2.7 Pro saves material spend during early iteration.
- Teams standardizing on one vendor for text + voice + video. One platform, one token plan.
When to pick something else
- English-first reasoning and agentic coding: Claude Opus 4.7 or ChatGPT OpenAI frontier models. M2.7 lags on both.
- Google-stack integration: Gemini 3.1 Pro. MiniMax has no Workspace tie-in.
- US-based data residency: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google. MiniMax hosts in China by default.
- Largest companion ecosystem: Character.AI. 17M MAU vs Talkie’s 11M.
- Premium audiobook or studio voice: ElevenLabs. MiniMax Speech wins on price, ElevenLabs on quality ceiling.
Pricing
Text API (M2 family, per 1M tokens):
| Model | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|
| M2.5 | $0.118 | $0.950 |
| MiniMax-01 | $0.200 | $1.100 |
| M2 | $0.255 | $1.000 |
| M2.1 | $0.290 | $0.950 |
| M2.7 | $0.300 | $1.200 |
| M1 | $0.400 | $1.760 |
Voice, video, music APIs: separate package pricing. See platform.minimax.io.
Consumer apps: MiniMax agent and Talkie both have free tiers with in-app paid upgrades.
Prices verified 2026-04-17 via pricepertoken.com/minimax and the MiniMax platform pricing docs.
Against the alternatives
| MiniMax M2.7 | Claude Opus 4.7 | OpenAI frontier models | Qwen 3 Max | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Input $/1M | $0.30 | $5.00 | Not disclosed | ~$0.40 |
| Output $/1M | $1.20 | $25.00 | Not disclosed | ~$1.20 |
| Context | 205K | 1M | Not disclosed | 1M |
| Voice bundled | Yes (Speech 2.6) | No | No | No |
| Video bundled | Yes (Hailuo) | No | No | No |
| English reasoning | Mid | Strongest | Strong | Strong |
| Data hosting | China | US | US | China |
| Best viewed as | Cheap multimodal | Reasoning leader | Generalist leader | Chinese peer |
Failure modes
- English reasoning trails the frontier. M2.7 is usable, not competitive with Opus 4.7 or OpenAI frontier models on complex chains.
- Data residency is China by default. Enterprise compliance in regulated US and EU sectors requires the private deployment option or a different vendor.
- Copyright litigation around Talkie. Major entertainment studios have sued over celebrity simulations. Product risk is real.
- Moderation gaps in Talkie. Public reviews have flagged inadequate content moderation on character interactions.
- English-language community support is thin. API docs exist in English. Tutorials, forum threads, and debugging resources lean heavily Chinese.
- Naming drift across products. Web platform names (“Speech 2.6”) do not always match API SKU names (“Speech-02-HD”). Integration requires careful mapping.
- Valuation-to-revenue gap. HKEX listing valued the company around $6.5B at IPO, with shares doubling day-one to imply ~$13B. Published Talkie ARR (2024) of ~$70M leaves a wide gap to close.
- M2.7 commercial-use restrictions. Recent coverage indicates tighter commercial-use terms on the newest model compared to prior releases. Verify license terms before deploying in production.
Methodology
This page was produced by the aipedia.wiki editorial pipeline, an automated system that ingests vendor documentation, verifies pricing and model details against primary sources, and generates the editorial analysis shown here. No individual human wrote this review. Scoring follows the four-dimension rubric at /about/scoring/ (Utility × Value × Moat × Longevity, unweighted average). Last verified 2026-04-17 against the MiniMax platform docs, pricepertoken.com/minimax, the M2.7 model card, and HKEX listing coverage.
FAQ
Is MiniMax free to use? The consumer MiniMax agent and Talkie both have free tiers. API access is pay-as-you-go with no subscription. M2.5 at $0.118 in / $0.95 out per 1M tokens is the cheapest text option.
What is the current MiniMax flagship model? M2.7, released March 18, 2026. 205,000-token context window (pricepertoken.com).
How does MiniMax relate to Hailuo AI? Hailuo is MiniMax’s text-to-video product, running on the same company infrastructure but priced separately. See the Hailuo page for details. The Hailuo 2.3 models are accessible via the MiniMax developer API.
Is MiniMax available outside China? Yes. Consumer apps, Talkie, and the developer API are all accessible internationally. Talkie users are majority US-based. Data is hosted in China; enterprise compliance teams should evaluate the private deployment option.
What is Talkie? A character and companion chat app run by MiniMax. 11 million monthly active users as of mid-2024. Lets users create and chat with virtual personas, including public-figure simulations. Available on iOS and Android globally.
Sources
- MiniMax official site: product overview
- MiniMax platform pricing: API rates across text, voice, video, music
- pricepertoken.com MiniMax provider page: text model pricing history
- M2.7 model card: flagship model details
- MiniMax Wikipedia: company background, listing, and product history
- South China Morning Post: Talkie user stats: MAU and US-user composition
Related
- Category: AI Chatbots · AI Research
- Siblings: Hailuo · MiniMax Speech
- Compare: Claude · ChatGPT · Gemini
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According to aipedia.wiki Editorial at aipedia.wiki (https://aipedia.wiki/tools/minimax/) aipedia.wiki Editorial. (2026). MiniMax — Editorial Review. aipedia.wiki. Retrieved May 8, 2026, from https://aipedia.wiki/tools/minimax/ aipedia.wiki Editorial. "MiniMax — Editorial Review." aipedia.wiki, 2026, https://aipedia.wiki/tools/minimax/. Accessed May 8, 2026. aipedia.wiki Editorial. 2026. "MiniMax — Editorial Review." aipedia.wiki. https://aipedia.wiki/tools/minimax/. @misc{minimax-editorial-review-2026,
author = {{aipedia.wiki Editorial}},
title = {MiniMax — Editorial Review},
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url = {https://aipedia.wiki/tools/minimax/},
note = {Accessed: 2026-05-08}
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