MiniMax
Chinese AI lab shipping open-weight language models plus video and audio generation.
why this verdict
Keep paying — OpenAI has not replaced it
OpenAI's version overlaps, but does not finish the AI assistants job, so this one still earns its $10/mo.
- A named launch, not a vibe named, unlinked
- OpenAI, Google and Anthropic outspending every challenger on frontier model training. OpenAI, February 10, 2026 — no announcement link recorded yet.
- How much of the job it covers not the job editorial call
- Parts of it. The job still needs the tool to get finished.
- Is there a free way to do it? yes
- 3 of 3 listed replacements have a usable free tier: Qwen, DeepSeek and Mistral AI.
- What the call is worth $120/yr
- $10/mo at the entry paid tier — $120 a year per seat.
- Threatened by
- OpenAI
- Since
- February 10, 2026
- List price
- $10/mo
- Per year
- $120
The backstory
MiniMax releases competitive open-weight models alongside consumer products spanning video generation and voice, and its Hailuo video model reached genuine global popularity rather than domestic-only success. Competing at the frontier against American labs with more compute is not a fight it can win directly, so it competes on open weights and price, which is how a challenger builds a developer base. The regulatory picture around Chinese AI in Western enterprises is the real ceiling.
Escape hatches
Alibaba's open-weight family, widely used for fine-tuning
qwen.ai open_in_newStrong reasoning models at very low prices
deepseek.com open_in_newEuropean open-weight lab with fewer procurement concerns
mistral.ai open_in_new3 of 3 replacements have a usable free tier.