(Dec 22): Chinese OpenAI contenders MiniMax and Zhipu AI offered the first look into their business models and profit prospects in listing filings, revealing revenue constraints compared with their deep-pocketed Silicon Valley peers.
The two outfits, which count Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd among their common backers, are in a heated race to become the first domestic generative AI startups to go public. Among the survivors of a brutal price war once dubbed the “Battle of One Hundred Models”, each could raise hundreds of millions of dollars in Hong Kong debuts in the coming weeks.
Staffed by elite AI scientists from Tsinghua University, Zhipu has pursued state-of-the-art models while building bespoke AI solutions for government-linked clients. MiniMax focused early on global products ranging from AI companions to video-editing tools.
For 2024, Zhipu and MiniMax generated 312.4 million yuan and 214.75 million yuan in revenue respectively. Those figures are a fraction of OpenAI’s estimated US$13 billion in annualised revenue and Anthropic’s projected US$9 billion this year, although Zhipu and MiniMax’s valuations are also far more modest at roughly US$4 billion each.
Here are a few charts summarising their key financial information.
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