Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup Minimax is reportedly aiming to raise more than $600 million in an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong.
The company could begin accepting orders from investors as early as Wednesday (Dec. 31) in preparation for a January listing, but the size and timing of the deal could change, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday (Dec. 30), citing anonymous sources.
According to Bloomberg, MiniMax declined to comment on the report.
The company is one of several companies vying to go public as China's first generative AI startup, and aims to compete with U.S. leaders in the space, the report said.
Rival company Knowledge Atlas Technology Joint Stock Co., also known as Zhipu AI or Z.ai, aims to raise $552 million in an IPO in Hong Kong, according to reports.
In March, it was reported that Zhipu AI raised more than 1 billion yuan ($137 million) in a funding round led by Hangzhou Construction Investment Group and Shangcheng Capital. Both companies have ties to the Hangzhou local government, and existing backers include Alibaba Group and Tencent.
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PYMNTS reports that the Chinese AI startup is gaining traction after DeepSeek wowed Silicon Valley with a basic model that performed as well as the best AI models, but at a fraction of the price.
In July, Z.ai released a new AI model that costs less to use than DeepSeek, is open source, and can run on eight Nvidia H20 chips.
According to the company, the GLM-4.5 model series includes two models, GLM-4.5 and GLM-4.5-Air, that meet the requirements of agent applications by integrating inference, coding, and agent functionality.
Reuters reported on December 23 that global investors are betting on Chinese AI companies in hopes of finding the next deep seeker and diversifying their investments.
According to the report, China is moving quickly to list semiconductor manufacturers in a bid to gain technological independence and narrow the technology gap with the United States.
China and Hong Kong are also seeing a wave of startups trying to match DeepSeek's success and tap into growing demand from investors.
