# Yan Junjie

> Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/yan_junjie
> Updated: 2026-09-23
> Fact-checked: 2026-09-23
> Categories: Chinese AI, People
> License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) - attribute to "AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai)"
> Cite as: AI Wiki. "Yan Junjie." aiwiki.ai, 23 Sept 2026. https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/yan_junjie
> From AI Wiki (https://aiwiki.ai), the free encyclopedia of artificial intelligence. Reuse freely with attribution.

**Yan Junjie** (闫俊杰, born 1989) is a Chinese [artificial intelligence](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/artificial_intelligence) researcher and entrepreneur who is the founder, chairman, chief executive officer, and chief technology officer of [MiniMax](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/minimax), the Shanghai-based AI company behind the abab and MiniMax-M [foundation models](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/foundation_models) and the [Hailuo](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/hailuo) video products.[1][8] A former vice president of [SenseTime](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/sensetime), he founded MiniMax at the turn of 2022 and took it public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on January 9, 2026, a debut in which the shares more than doubled and which made him a billionaire at 36.[1][2][6][7]

## Who is Yan Junjie?

Yan Junjie is the founder, chairman, CEO, and CTO of [MiniMax](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/minimax), the Shanghai-based AI company known for its abab and MiniMax-M foundation models, the [Hailuo](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/hailuo) video generator, and the [AI companion](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/ai_companions) apps Talkie and Xingye.[1][3] Before founding MiniMax he spent more than six years at [SenseTime](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/sensetime), where his positions included vice president and vice-head of its research institute.[1] He founded MiniMax with the aim of building general-purpose AI for the broad public.[3] He took the company public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on January 9, 2026, in a debut that more than doubled the offer price and made him a billionaire.[2][6][7] Ten days later he became the second founder of a Chinese foundation-model company, after [DeepSeek](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/deepseek)'s [Liang Wenfeng](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/liang_wenfeng), to address a symposium chaired by Premier Li Qiang.[13][14]

## What is Yan Junjie's background and education?

Yan was born in 1989 in Henan province. Accounts of his school years describe him as a strong mathematics student who taught himself advanced calculus in high school.[8][19] According to MiniMax's own disclosures, he received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Southeast University in June 2010 and a doctorate in the area of artificial intelligence from the Institute of Automation of the [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/chinese_academy_of_sciences) in July 2015, after which he conducted postdoctoral research at [Tsinghua University](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/tsinghua_university).[1]

## What did Yan Junjie do before MiniMax?

Yan joined SenseTime in 2015, reportedly starting as an intern, and spent more than six years at the computer vision company, where his positions included vice president and vice-head of its research institute.[1][19] He oversaw work spanning [deep learning](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/deep_learning) technology, distributed computing, inference systems, and general intelligence research.[3] According to MiniMax's listing disclosures, Yan has published approximately 200 academic articles with more than 30,000 citations. His honors include the Wu Wenjun Artificial Intelligence Natural Science Award and the Wu Wenjun Artificial Intelligence Technology Progress Award (both October 2019), a first prize in the Guangdong Province Technology Invention Award (February 2020), selection for the 2024 Shanghai Oriental Talents Program (December 2024), and a senior professional title from the Shanghai Municipal Professional Title Evaluation Committee (February 2025).[1]

An avid gamer, Yan took notice of [OpenAI](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/openai) in 2019 after its bots defeated elite human teams in the battle-arena game Dota 2, an episode that pushed his interests from [computer vision](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/computer_vision) toward natural language processing.[2] He left SenseTime at the end of 2021, just as the company was about to go public, later explaining: "We believed that building general-purpose AI for the public was important. The aim was to develop a model company that could also make good products."[3]

## When did Yan Junjie found MiniMax, and what is the company?

Yan founded MiniMax in Shanghai and named it after the minimax algorithm from game theory.[3] Chinese media, including The Paper, and the newsletter Asia Tech Lens date the founding to December 2021.[26][3] MiniMax's prospectus gives a more detailed chronology: its Cayman Islands holding company, MiniMax Group Inc., was incorporated on June 30, 2021, and the business has been operating, with research and development under way, since the start of January 2022. The prospectus describes the company as founded in 2022 and names Yan and Yun Yeyi as its founders.[18] Several early leaders came from SenseTime. Chief operating officer Yun Yeyi, whom the prospectus names with Yan as a founder and CNBC describes as a co-founder, worked at SenseTime from 2017 to 2022. Zhou Yucong, who later became MiniMax's visual model research leader, worked at SenseTime from 2018 to 2019 and at Huawei before joining MiniMax in March 2022.[1][6] The video game developer miHoYo was an angel investor and early backer. Other shareholders include [Tencent](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/tencent), [Alibaba](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/alibaba), Sequoia China (now HongShan), Hillhouse, and IDG Capital, and ZhenFund took part in six consecutive rounds.[5] In March 2024, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that Alibaba was leading a financing round of at least US$600 million that valued MiniMax at more than US$2.5 billion. It was Alibaba's second major bet on a Chinese AI startup that year, after a round in [Moonshot AI](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/moonshot_ai).[4]

MiniMax is one of China's so-called "AI tigers," a cohort of well-funded large-model startups built to rival U.S. labs such as OpenAI.[3][6] From the start, the company set out to build both foundation models and consumer products.[3] By the end of 2025 it reported more than 236 million cumulative users across over 200 countries and regions, 214,000 enterprise customers and developers, and more than 70 percent of revenue from international markets.[16] In July 2025, [NVIDIA](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/nvidia) CEO [Jensen Huang](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/jensen_huang) named MiniMax among China's world-class AI innovators at the China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing, and then met Yan for about two hours.[3]

## What products and models has MiniMax built under Yan Junjie?

MiniMax's first consumer product, the AI companion app Glow, launched in October 2022 and reached close to 5 million users within four months before being removed from Chinese app stores in March 2023 over regulatory clearance requirements.[3] The company relaunched the concept as Talkie for international markets in June 2023 and as Xingye for the domestic market in September 2023.[3] Talkie, a rival to [Character.AI](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/character_ai), reached 11 million monthly active users globally by mid-2024.[3] In December 2024 it disappeared from Apple's U.S. App Store; the app attributed the removal to "technical reasons."[12]

The company's language models evolved from the proprietary abab family into the open-weight MiniMax-01 and M series:

| Release | Model | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| April 2024 | abab 6.5 / 6.5s | abab 6.5 has about a trillion parameters and a 200,000-token context; the series uses a [mixture-of-experts](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/mixture_of_experts) architecture [9][5] |
| January 2025 | MiniMax-01 (Text-01, VL-01) | Open-weight MoE with 456B total and 45.9B active parameters; lightning attention [20] |
| June 2025 | [MiniMax-M1](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/minimax_m1) | Described by MiniMax as the world's first open-weight large-scale hybrid-attention reasoning model; 1 million-token context; Apache 2.0 license [10][21] |
| October 2025 | [MiniMax-M2](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/minimax_m2) | Coding and agentic model; followed by M2.1 and the companion-chat model M2-her in the fourth quarter of 2025 [16] |
| February 2026 | MiniMax-M2.5 | Coding, tool use, and workplace model; MiniMax reported a 37 percent coding-efficiency gain over M2.1 [16] |
| March 2026 | [MiniMax M2.7](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/minimax_m2_7) | Released between M2.5 and M3; weights followed in April 2026; weights published under a non-commercial license that requires MiniMax's written authorization for commercial use [22] |
| June 2026 | [MiniMax M3](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/minimax_m3) | Flagship upgrade for coding, agentic workflows, and professional work [23] |

On the multimodal side, MiniMax released the video-01 text-to-video model on August 31, 2024. It was followed by Hailuo 02 in June 2025 and Hailuo 2.3 in October 2025.[11][3][16] The company also sells speech models, including Speech-02 and, from October 2025, Speech 2.6, as well as Music 2.0 and 2.5.[3][16] In late July 2026, shortly after the end of the reporting period, MiniMax released the video generation model [MiniMax H3](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/minimax_h3), later publishing its weights.[23] In September 2025, Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery jointly sued MiniMax in a federal court in California, alleging that its Hailuo AI service infringed their copyrights.[17]

## How did MiniMax's Hong Kong IPO affect Yan Junjie?

MiniMax published its Hong Kong prospectus on December 31, 2025 and priced its offering at HK$165 per share. It had 14 cornerstone investors, including Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Alibaba, Aspex, Eastspring, Mirae Asset, and E Fund, and the Hong Kong public tranche was oversubscribed about 1,837 times.[5][18] The stock debuted on January 9, 2026 under the code 00100, one day after rival [Zhipu AI](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/zhipu_ai), making MiniMax the second major Chinese large-model developer to go public.[5][6] The offering raised HK$4.8 billion (about US$620 million). With the over-allotment option, which was fully exercised, gross proceeds came to about HK$5.54 billion (US$710 million).[5][6][24] Shares closed their first day at HK$345, up about 109 percent from the HK$165 offer price, giving the company a market value of HK$106.7 billion.[6][7]

According to the prospectus, Yan's holding entities would control about 72 percent of the votes on most shareholder resolutions after the offering, under a weighted-voting-rights structure, and about 25.9 percent of the votes on reserved matters, which are decided one share, one vote.[18] Bloomberg estimated at the offer price that the IPO would give Yan a US$1.6 billion fortune; Forbes put his net worth at about US$3.2 billion after the first-day surge, when he was 36.[2][8] For full-year 2025, MiniMax reported revenue of US$79.0 million, up 158.9 percent year over year, an adjusted net loss of US$250.9 million, and a cash balance of about US$1.05 billion.[16] On January 19, 2026, Yan spoke at a symposium chaired by Premier Li Qiang on the draft Government Work Report and the outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan.[13][14]

## What has MiniMax done since the IPO?

MiniMax raised more capital within six months of listing. On July 10, 2026, it announced a placement of 35.6 million new Class A shares at HK$268 each, for gross proceeds of about HK$9.54 billion, alongside a HK$6.5 billion issue of zero-coupon convertible bonds due 2027. The company's disclosure showed Yan's holding falling from 25.22 percent to 22.65 percent of issued shares after the placement.[25]

In its first-half 2026 results, published on August 26, 2026, MiniMax reported revenue of US$116.6 million, up 283.1 percent year over year and more than its full-year 2025 revenue. Its open platform and enterprise services made up 63.4 percent of revenue. The adjusted net loss was US$293.0 million, and cash stood at US$1.32 billion as of June 30, 2026.[23] Yan said token consumption on MiniMax had grown twentyfold between January and July 2026, and summarized the company's approach as "Minimize the Cost, Maximize the Intelligence."[23]

## What is Yan Junjie's vision for AI?

Yan's stated mission for MiniMax is "Intelligence with Everyone," which he calls "the founding vision that drives everything we do."[15] In a keynote titled "Everyone's AI" on the opening day of the 2025 [World Artificial Intelligence Conference](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/world_artificial_intelligence_conference) in Shanghai, published by MiniMax on July 30, 2025, he said that [artificial general intelligence](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/artificial_general_intelligence) "must serve the many, not the few." He argued that AGI would not come from one company alone, and that "it will be built together with users, and it should belong to all of us."[15] He pointed to diverse alignment objectives, multi-agent systems, and accelerating open-source development as forces working against monopolization of AI, and noted that inference costs for leading models had fallen by an order of magnitude in a year.[15]

Following MiniMax's 2025 results, he said the firm would "evolve from a large-model company into a platform company for the AI era."[16]

## References

1. [Board of Directors and Senior Management - MiniMax Investor Relations](https://ir.minimax.io/corporate-information/management)
2. [Yan Junjie, founder of Chinese AI firm MiniMax, becomes billionaire at 36 - VnExpress International](https://e.vnexpress.net/news/business/billionaires/yan-junjie-founder-of-chinese-ai-firm-minimax-becomes-billionaire-at-36-5005067.html)
3. [Meet MiniMax: The Chinese Tech Company Touted by Jensen Huang That's Headed for an IPO - Asia Tech Lens](https://www.asiatechlens.com/p/meet-minimax-the-chinese-tech-company)
4. [Alibaba leads $600 million financing round for Chinese AI startup MiniMax - Fortune, March 5, 2024](https://fortune.com/asia/2024/03/05/alibaba-leads-financing-round-chinese-ai-startup-minimax/)
5. [MiHoYo-backed AI firm MiniMax jumps on Hong Kong debut, market value tops $11.5 billion - TechNode, January 9, 2026](https://technode.com/2026/01/09/mihoyo-backed-ai-firm-minimax-jumps-on-hong-kong-debut-market-value-tops-11-5-billion/)
6. [MiniMax doubles in Hong Kong debut, marking yet another Chinese AI listing - CNBC, January 9, 2026](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/09/minimax-hong-kong-ipo-ai-tigers-zhipu.html)
7. [MiniMax sees market value cross HK$100b after shares jump 100% on debut - China Daily, January 10, 2026](https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202601/10/WS696235e8a310d6866eb33111.html)
8. [China's MiniMax IPO to Hand Devoted Gamer a $1.6 Billion Fortune - Bloomberg, January 9, 2026](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-09/china-s-minimax-ipo-to-hand-devoted-gamer-a-1-6-billion-fortune)
9. [The General Large Language Model abab6.5 Series - MiniMax News, April 17, 2024](https://www.minimax.io/news/abab65-series)
10. [MiniMax Releases M1: a 456B Hybrid-Attention Model for Long-Context Reasoning and Software Tasks - InfoQ, June 2025](https://www.infoq.com/news/2025/06/minimax-m1/)
11. [MiniMax officially releases the Video-01 video generation model - MiniMax News, August 31, 2024](https://www.minimax.io/news/video-01)
12. [Chinese-owned Character.ai rival vanishes from US App Store - South China Morning Post, December 2024](https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3291715/chinese-owned-characterai-rival-vanishes-us-app-store)
13. [China signals global AI push as MiniMax CEO joins meeting with Premier Li Qiang - South China Morning Post, January 2026](https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3340515/china-signals-global-ai-push-minimax-ceo-joins-meeting-premier-li-qiang)
14. [MiniMax Founder Becomes Second AI Entrepreneur to Meet China's Premier - Geopolitechs, January 2026](https://www.geopolitechs.org/p/minimax-founder-becomes-second-ai)
15. [MiniMax CEO Keynote at WAIC 2025: Everyone's AI - MiniMax News, July 30, 2025](https://www.minimax.io/news/minimax-ceo-keynote-at-waic-2025-everyones-ai)
16. [MiniMax Global Announces Full Year 2025 Financial Results - MiniMax News, March 2, 2026](https://www.minimax.io/news/minimax-global-announces-full-year-2025-financial-results)
17. [Disney, Universal, Warner Bros. Discovery sue China's MiniMax for copyright infringement - CNBC, September 16, 2025](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/16/disney-universal-warner-bros-discovery-sue-chinas-minimax.html)
18. [MiniMax Group Inc. Global Offering prospectus - HKEXnews, December 31, 2025](https://www1.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2025/1231/2025123100025.pdf)
19. [Yan Junjie - Wikipedia (accessed September 2026)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Junjie)
20. [MiniMax-Text-01 model card - Hugging Face, January 2025](https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-Text-01)
21. [MiniMax-M1-80k model card - Hugging Face, June 2025](https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M1-80k)
22. [MiniMax-M2.7 model card - Hugging Face, 2026](https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M2.7)
23. [MiniMax Announces First Half 2026 Financial Results - MiniMax News, August 26, 2026](https://www.minimax.io/news/minimax-announces-first-half-2026-financial-results-1787744160)
24. [MiniMax Group Inc. announcement: full exercise of the over-allotment option - HKEXnews, January 2026](https://www1.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2026/0111/2026011100015.pdf)
25. [MiniMax Group Inc. announcement: placing of 35,600,000 new Class A shares and proposed issue of HK$6,500 million zero coupon guaranteed convertible bonds due 2027 - HKEXnews, July 10, 2026](https://www1.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2026/0710/2026071000027.pdf)
26. [MiniMax创始人闫俊杰：未来全球只会剩下5家大模型企业 (MiniMax founder Yan Junjie: only five large-model companies will remain worldwide) - The Paper, July 4, 2024](https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_27962886)