MiniMax founder and CEO Yan Junjie has told employees that he will stop taking a salary until the Chinese AI company achieves artificial general intelligence (AGI). In an internal memo that a MiniMax executive publicly shared on X, Yan also pledged to transfer part of his personal shareholding to reward employees and support open-source AI development.The announcement came alongside MiniMax’s plans to raise approximately HK$16.04 billion (about $2.05 billion) through a Hong Kong share placement and zero-coupon convertible bonds to fund AI infrastructure, research and development, commercialisation and general corporate operations.
Read MiniMax CEO’s memo to employees about not taking his salary until AGI is achieved
In the memo addressed to employees, which was shared on X, Yan wrote (translated from Chinese): “Dear colleagues,Markets fluctuate and external noise abounds, yet our forward trajectory remains unchanged.Standing at the forefront of the industry, we understand the true pace of technological evolution—and the long-term value we are creating and accumulating—better than anyone else.From today until the day we achieve AGI, I will no longer draw a salary from the company.Over the next four years, I will allocate shares equivalent to 4% of the company’s total equity—held in my personal name—to incentivize team members who have fought alongside the company and created value together over the long term. Additionally, I will set aside 1% of the shares to establish a dedicated fund to provide ongoing support for the development of relevant open-source communities.I will devote all my time, energy, and resources to this endeavor. This is the long-term commitment I make as the founder.We will keep going until we get there.Intelligence with EveryoneI/O”According to the company, the 4% equity allocation will be distributed over the next four years to employees, while another 1% of Yan’s personal shareholding will be used to establish a fund supporting open-source communities and the broader AI ecosystem.
MiniMax plans fresh fundraising
MiniMax is seeking to raise approximately HK$16.04 billion through the issue of 35.6 million new Class A shares and HK$6.5 billion in zero-coupon convertible bonds maturing in 2027. The share placement is priced at HK$268 per share and is expected to raise about HK$9.54 billion. The convertible bonds carry a conversion price of HK$335 per share.The company said the proceeds will be used to expand AI infrastructure, invest in research and development, accelerate commercialisation and support general corporate operations. MiniMax went public in Hong Kong in January, raising approximately HK$4.8 billion at a valuation of about $6.5 billion.
Competition in China’s AI market
MiniMax has faced increasing competition from Chinese AI developers, including DeepSeek, Zhipu and Moonshot AI. The company’s latest flagship model, MiniMax M3, was launched in June. It features a one-million-token context window, multimodal capabilities for image and video understanding and the company’s MiniMax Sparse Attention architecture, which is designed to reduce long-context inference costs while improving coding and AI agent performance.MiniMax also reported $79 million in revenue for 2025, a 159% year-over-year increase, with over 70% of its revenue generated outside China. The company also posted a net loss of $1.87 billion, largely due to changes in the fair value of financial instruments following its initial public offering.