{"id":378338,"date":"2026-04-02T13:56:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T13:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/378338\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T13:56:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T13:56:23","slug":"what-zhipu-and-minimaxs-first-post-ipo-earnings-say-about-the-2-chinese-ai-start-ups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/378338\/","title":{"rendered":"What Zhipu and MiniMax\u2019s first post-IPO earnings say about the 2 Chinese AI start-ups"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Chinese artificial intelligence start-ups Zhipu AI and MiniMax have shown early signs of sustainable commercialisation of their AI models, analysts said, as investors continue to pump up their Hong Kong stocks despite widening losses.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">That assessment comes as the companies reported their first earnings since their respective initial public offerings in early January, providing a glimpse into the business models of an industry still in its infancy globally.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The South China Morning Post takes a look into their business models and provides the management view on outlook, along with analysts\u2019 comments.<\/p>\n<p>How do Zhipu and MiniMax make money?<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Pure-play AI companies organise their business models around their AI models, differentiating them from more established tech giants that integrate their models with more lucrative offerings such as cloud services.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Beijing-based Zhipu\u2019s business revolves around its model-as-a-service platform, where the company\u2019s in-house AI models primarily serve institutional clients, either through local deployment in which user data is hosted on-premise or via the cloud.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Shanghai-based MiniMax has more diverse revenue streams, stemming from a similar enterprise-facing model serving business as well as two popular consumer-facing apps \u2013 the video generation platform Hailuo AI and AI companion app Talkie.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Zhipu\u2019s business revolves around its model-as-a-service platform. Photo: Shutterstock\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/707120a1-b2e3-4698-a91d-a94b3937f658_14a84bd0.jpg\" title=\"Zhipu\u2019s business revolves around its model-as-a-service platform. Photo: Shutterstock\"\/>Zhipu\u2019s business revolves around its model-as-a-service platform. Photo: ShutterstockHow much money did they make in 2025?<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Known as Z.ai internationally, Zhipu reported revenue of 724.33 million yuan (US$104.8 million) last year, a 131.9 per cent year-on-year increase. MiniMax\u2019s revenue totalled US$79 million in 2025, a 159 per cent year-on-year jump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chinese artificial intelligence start-ups Zhipu AI and MiniMax have shown early signs of sustainable commercialisation of their AI&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,3673,218,219,2102,229,169239,140950,240,147306,61,60,16546,169238,21648,1682,5698,10178,80,75988],"class_list":{"0":"post-378338","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-anthropic","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-beijing","13":"tag-chinese","14":"tag-delphi-digital","15":"tag-guosen-securities","16":"tag-hong-kong","17":"tag-huatai-securities","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-jd-com","21":"tag-kuaishou","22":"tag-minimax","23":"tag-openai","24":"tag-shanghai","25":"tag-south-china-morning-post","26":"tag-technology","27":"tag-zhipu-ai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}