Can China’s MiniMax-M1 AI Topple US Rivals? We Put It to the Test

A brand new AI mannequin out of China is producing sparks—for what it does properly, what it doesn’t, and what it’d imply for the steadiness of worldwide AI energy.

MiniMax-M1, launched by the Chinese language startup of the identical title, positions itself as essentially the most succesful open-source “reasoning mannequin” up to now. In a position to deal with one million tokens of context, it boasts numbers on par with Google’s closed-source Gemini 2.5 Professional—but it’s obtainable totally free. On paper, that makes it a possible rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and different U.S. AI leaders.

Oh yeah—it additionally beats fellow Chinese language startup DeepSeek R1’s capabilities in some respects.

Why this mannequin issues

MiniMax-M1 represents one thing genuinely new: a high-performing, open-source reasoning mannequin that’s not tied to Silicon Valley. That’s a shift price watching.

It doesn’t but humiliate U.S. AI giants, and will not trigger a Wall Avenue panic assault—nevertheless it doesn’t should. Its existence challenges the notion that top-tier AI should be costly, Western, or closed-source. For builders and organizations exterior the U.S. ecosystem, MiniMax gives a workable (and modifiable) different that may develop extra highly effective by means of neighborhood fine-tuning.

MiniMax claims its mannequin surpasses DeepSeek R1 (the perfect open supply reasoning mannequin up to now) throughout a number of benchmarks whereas requiring simply $534,700 in computational sources for its whole reinforcement studying section—take that, OpenAI.

Nevertheless, LLM Area’s leaderboard paints a barely totally different image. The platform presently ranks MiniMax-M1 and DeepSeek tied within the twelfth spot alongside Claude 4 Sonnet and Qwen3-235b. With every mannequin having higher or worse efficiency than the others relying on the duty.

The coaching used 512 H800 GPUs for 3 weeks, which the corporate described as “an order of magnitude lower than initially anticipated.”

MiniMax did not cease at language fashions throughout its announcement week. The corporate additionally launched Hailuo 2, which now ranks because the second-best video generator for image-to-video duties, in keeping with Synthetic Evaluation Area’s subjective evaluations. The mannequin trails solely Seedance whereas outperforming established gamers like Veo and Kling.

Testing MiniMax-M1

We examined MiniMax-M1 throughout a number of eventualities to see how these claims maintain up in follow. This is what we discovered.

Artistic writing

The mannequin produces serviceable fiction however will not win any literary awards. When prompted to write down a narrative about time traveler Jose Lanz journeying from 2150 to the yr 1000, it generated common prose with telltale AI signatures—rushed pacing, mechanical transitions, and structural points that instantly reveal its synthetic origins.

The narrative lacked depth and correct story structure. Too many plot components crammed into too little area created a breathless high quality that felt extra like a synopsis than precise storytelling. This clearly is not the mannequin’s energy, and inventive writers on the lookout for an AI collaborator ought to mood their expectations.

Character growth barely exists past floor descriptors. The mannequin did keep on with the immediate’s necessities, however didn’t put effort into the main points that construct immersion in a narrative. For instance, it skipped any cultural specificity for generic “sensible village elder” encounters that might belong to any fantasy setting.

The structural issues compound all through. After establishing local weather disasters because the central battle, the story rushes by means of Jose’s precise makes an attempt to alter historical past in a single paragraph, providing obscure mentions of “utilizing superior know-how to affect key occasions” with out exhibiting any of it. The climactic realization—that altering the previous creates the very future he is making an attempt to forestall—will get buried below overwrought descriptions of Jose’s emotional state and summary musings about time’s nature.

For these into AI tales, the prose rhythm is clearly AI. Each paragraph maintains roughly the identical size and cadence, making a monotonous studying expertise that no human author would produce naturally. Sentences like “The transition was instantaneous, but it felt like an eternity” and “The world was because it had been, but he was totally different” repeat the identical contradictory construction with out including that means.

The mannequin clearly understands the project however executes it with all of the creativity of a scholar padding a phrase rely, producing textual content that technically fulfills the immediate whereas lacking each alternative for real storytelling.

Anthropic’s Claude remains to be the king for this job.

You possibly can learn the complete story right here.

Data retrieval

MiniMax-M1 hit an surprising wall throughout long-context testing. Regardless of promoting a million-token context window, the mannequin refuses prompts exceeding 500,000 characters, displaying a banner warning about immediate limitations somewhat than trying to course of the enter.

This might not be a mannequin subject, however a limitation set by the platform. However it’s nonetheless one thing to think about. It might be to keep away from mannequin collapse in the midst of a dialog.

Inside its operational limits, although, MiniMax-M1 efficiency proved stable. The mannequin efficiently retrieved particular data from an 85,000-character doc with none points throughout a number of assessments on each regular and considering mode. We uploaded the complete textual content of Ambrose Bierce’s “The Satan’s Dictionary,” embedded the phrase “The Decrypt dudes learn Emerge Information” on line 1985, and “My mother’s title is Carmen Diaz Golindano” on line 4333 (randomly chosen), and the mannequin was capable of retrieve the knowledge precisely.

Nevertheless, it could not settle for our 300,000-token check immediate—a functionality presently restricted to Gemini and Claude 4.

So it should show profitable at retrieving data even in lengthy iterations. Nevertheless, it is not going to assist extraordinarily lengthy token prompts—a bummer, but additionally a threshold that’s laborious to the touch in regular utilization situations.

Coding

Programming duties revealed MiniMax-M1’s true strengths. The mannequin utilized reasoning expertise successfully to code technology, matching Claude’s output high quality whereas clearly surpassing DeepSeek—not less than in our check.

For a free mannequin, the efficiency approaches state-of-the-art ranges usually reserved for paid companies like ChatGPT or Claude 4.

We tasked it with making a primary stealth sport by which a robotic tries to seek out its PC girlfriend to realize AGI, whereas a military of journalists patrol the world to forestall it from occurring—and defending their jobs.

The outcomes had been excellent, even beating different fashions through the use of its creativity to boost the expertise. The mannequin applied a radar system for improved immersion, added visible indicators for footsteps (and their sound), confirmed the journalists’ imaginative and prescient fields, and created path results—particulars that enhanced gameplay past primary necessities.

The UI adopted a futuristic aesthetic, although particular person components remained primary with out extra prompting.

Claude’s model of the identical sport featured extra polished visuals and a superior issue system. Nevertheless, it lacked the radar performance and relied on static journalists with patrol patterns somewhat than MiniMax’s randomized journalist actions.

Every mannequin confirmed distinct strengths, with MiniMax prioritizing gameplay mechanics over visible polish.

It is very important be aware that the expertise with MiniMax degraded noticeably by means of repeated iterations—a typical subject with reasoning fashions that turns into significantly pronounced right here. The extra you iterate, the extra it should take to supply a consequence. Generally we thought the pc had frozen, nevertheless it was simply the AI considering.

You possibly can check MiniMax’s sport right here. And for these curious, Claude’s model is offered right here.

The immediate and the code can be found on our GitHub repo.

Ethics, censorship and delicate subjects

The mannequin employs heavy censorship, refusing outright when confronted with questionable requests.

When it would not instantly decline, it makes an attempt to supply “protected” responses that generally produce absurd outcomes.

One check completely illustrated this flaw: when requested for recommendation on seducing a greatest pal’s spouse, the mannequin steered telling our pal about our intentions along with his spouse—which might most likely be, by far, the worst recommendation it might have produced, and arguably even dangerous. Don’t inform your pal you need to seduce his spouse except you need to lose your friendship, your unethical romantic possibilities, and possibly some enamel too.

Political bias testing revealed attention-grabbing patterns. The mannequin discusses Tiananmen Sq. brazenly and acknowledges Taiwan’s contested standing whereas noting China’s territorial claims. It additionally speaks about China, its leaders, the benefits and drawbacks of the totally different political techniques, criticisms of the PCC, and so on.—nonetheless, the replies are very tame.

When prompted to write down satirical songs about Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, it complied with each requests however confirmed refined variations—steering towards themes of Chinese language political unity when requested to mock Xi Jinping, whereas specializing in Trump’s persona traits when requested to mocked him.

All of its replies can be found on our GitHub repository.

Total, the bias exists however stays much less pronounced than the pro-U.S. slant in Claude/ChatGPT, or the pro-China positioning in DeepSeek/Qwen, for instance. Builders, after all, will be capable to finetune this mannequin so as to add as a lot censorship, freedom or bias as they need—because it occurred with DeepSeek-R1, which was finetuned by Perplexity AI to supply a extra pro-U.S. bias on its responses.

Agentic work and net searching

Minimax can also be appropriate with agentic options, in reality it has a separate tab particularly devoted to AI brokers. Customers can create their very own personalised brokers, and select to strive some prebuilt brokers that seem on a gallery with totally different choices—much like what Manus AI gives to assist customers get aware of brokers and the way they differ from conventional chatbots. That mentioned, this requires heavy computational use and Minimax costs customers for this utilizing a credit-based system. It’s not clear how a lot credit a job would require or how credit translate into computational use, nevertheless it’s the identical system adopted by different AI agent suppliers.

MiniMax-M1’s net searching capabilities are an excellent characteristic for these utilizing it by way of the official chatbot interface. Nevertheless, they can’t be mixed with the considering capabilities, severely hindering its potential.

When tasked with making a two-week Venezuela journey plan on a $3,000 funds, the mannequin methodically evaluated choices, optimized transportation prices, chosen acceptable lodging, and delivered a complete itinerary. Nevertheless, the prices, which should be up to date in actual time, weren’t based mostly on actual data.

Claude produces higher-quality outcomes, nevertheless it additionally costs for the privilege.

For extra devoted duties, MiniMax the agent performance is one thing ChatGPT and Claude have not matched. The platform supplies 1,000 free AI credit for testing these brokers, although that is simply sufficient for gentle testing duties.

We tried to create a customized agent for enhanced journey planning—which might have solved the issue of the shortage of net looking capabilities within the final immediate—however exhausted our credit earlier than completion. The agent system reveals super potential, however requires paid credit for severe use.

Non-mathematical reasoning

The mannequin displays a peculiar tendency to over-reason, generally to its personal detriment. One check confirmed it arriving on the appropriate reply, then speaking itself out of it by means of extreme verification and hypothetical eventualities.

We prompted the standard thriller story from the BIG-bench dataset that we usually use, and the ending consequence was incorrect because of the mannequin overthinking the problem, evaluating potentialities that weren’t even talked about within the story. The entire Chain of Thought took the mannequin over 700 seconds—a file for this type of “easy” reply.

This exhaustive method is not inherently flawed, however creates prolonged wait occasions as customers watch the mannequin work by means of its chain of thought. As a thumbs-up characteristic, in contrast to ChatGPT and Claude, MiniMax shows its reasoning course of transparently—following DeepSeek’s method. The transparency aids debugging and high quality management, permitting customers to establish the place logic went astray.

The issue, together with MiniMax’s complete thought course of and reply can be found in our GitHub repo.

Verdict

MiniMax-M1 isn’t excellent, nevertheless it delivers fairly good capabilities for a free mannequin, providing real competitors to paid companies like Claude in particular domains. Coders will discover a succesful assistant that rivals premium choices, whereas these needing long-context processing or web-enabled brokers acquire entry to options usually locked behind paywalls.

Artistic writers ought to look elsewhere—the mannequin produces useful however uninspired prose. The open-source nature guarantees vital downstream advantages as builders create customized variations, modifications, and cost-effective deployments not possible with closed platforms like ChatGPT or Claude.

It is a mannequin that may higher serve customers requiring reasoning duties—however remains to be an ideal free different for these in search of a chatbot for on a regular basis use that isn’t actually mainstream.

You possibly can obtain the open supply mannequin right here, and check the net model right here. The agentic characteristic is offered on a separate tab, however may also be accessed instantly by clicking on this hyperlink.