Clipart Korea
The founder of Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company MiniMax has pledged not to take a single cent in pay until the firm achieves “artificial general intelligence (AGI),” after its share price fell about 80% from its peak. The company also took a head-on approach, unveiling plans to raise about 3 trillion won in funding.
According to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) on the 10th, MiniMax Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Yan Junjie emphasized in an internal memo sent to all employees that day that the company’s long-term vision remains unshaken amid market turbulence and outside noise.
“From today until the day we achieve AGI, I will not take any salary from the company,” he wrote. “I will devote all my time, energy and resources to this mission.” AGI refers to AI that aims to implement intellectual capabilities comparable to or exceeding those of humans across a wide range of tasks.
CEO Yan did not stop at the no-pay declaration, also deciding to give up part of his own equity. Under the plan, he will distribute 4% of his holdings to reward members who have long stayed with the company, and separately allocate 1% to a fund supporting the open-source developer ecosystem.
The SCMP analyzed that such a decision came amid the biggest crisis since the company’s founding. MiniMax has grown its valuation with assessments that it can replace the high-performance models of U.S. big tech firms such as Anthropic and Google at a much lower cost. Early this year, it also rose to the top of a global AI platform’s open-source usage rankings, edging out U.S. models.
Riding the momentum, it entered the Hong Kong stock market in early January this year, but the glory did not last long. After rising steadily since its listing, the share price soared to 1,238 Hong Kong dollars (about 238,000 won) at one point in March before turning downward. When the six-month sell restriction (lock-up) that had been in place since the initial public offering (IPO) was lifted early this month, shares flooded the market at once, deepening the decline. On the Hong Kong stock market on the 10th, MiniMax closed at 268.6 Hong Kong dollars (about 52,000 won), about one-fifth of its highest price.
The company launched its counterattack the same morning through a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It plans to issue 35.6 million new shares at 268 Hong Kong dollars (about 51,000 won) each to secure 9.5 billion Hong Kong dollars (about 1.8 trillion won), and to raise an additional 6.5 billion Hong Kong dollars (about 1.2 trillion won) through the issuance of convertible bonds.
Of the 16 billion Hong Kong dollars raised this way, 80% will go toward building AI infrastructure and model research and development (R&D), while 10% will be invested in overseas market expansion and upgrading coding products such as “MiniMax Code.”