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 effectively, 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 probably the most succesful open-source “reasoning mannequin” up to now. Capable of deal with one million tokens of context, it boasts numbers on par with Google’s closed-source Gemini 2.5 Professional—but it’s accessible at no cost. 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 value watching.

It doesn’t but humiliate U.S. AI giants, and will not trigger a Wall Road panic assault—but it surely doesn’t must. Its existence challenges the notion that top-tier AI should be costly, Western, or closed-source. For builders and organizations outdoors the U.S. ecosystem, MiniMax presents a workable (and modifiable) various that may develop extra highly effective by group fine-tuning.

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

Nonetheless, LLM Area’s leaderboard paints a barely completely different image. The platform at the moment 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 line 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 apply. Here is what we discovered.

Inventive 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 in search of an AI collaborator ought to mood their expectations.

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

The structural issues compound all through. After establishing local weather disasters because the central battle, the story rushes by Jose’s precise makes an attempt to vary historical past in a single paragraph, providing imprecise mentions of “utilizing superior expertise 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 beneath 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 completely different” repeat the identical contradictory construction with out including that means.

The mannequin clearly understands the task however executes it with all of the creativity of a pupil 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 process.

You possibly can learn the complete story right here.

Info 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 relatively 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 contemplate. It might be to keep away from mannequin collapse in the midst of a dialog.

Inside its operational limits, although, MiniMax-M1 efficiency proved strong. The mannequin efficiently retrieved particular info 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.

Nonetheless, it could not settle for our 300,000-token check immediate—a functionality at the moment restricted to Gemini and Claude 4.

So it would show profitable at retrieving info even in lengthy iterations. Nonetheless, it won’t assist extraordinarily lengthy token prompts—a bummer, but in addition 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 era, matching Claude’s output high quality whereas clearly surpassing DeepSeek—at the least in our check.

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

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

The outcomes had been excellent, even beating different fashions by utilizing its creativity to reinforce the expertise. The mannequin carried out 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 fundamental necessities.

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

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

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

You will need to observe that the expertise with MiniMax degraded noticeably by repeated iterations—a standard subject with reasoning fashions that turns into significantly pronounced right here. The extra you iterate, the extra it would take to provide a outcome. Typically we thought the pc had frozen, but it surely was simply the AI considering.

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

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

Ethics, censorship and delicate matters

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

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

One check completely illustrated this flaw: when requested for recommendation on seducing a finest pal’s spouse, the mannequin recommended telling our pal about our intentions together with his spouse—which might in all probability 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 probabilities, and possibly some tooth too.

Political bias testing revealed fascinating 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 downsides of the completely different political methods, criticisms of the PCC, and so on.—nevertheless, 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 delicate variations—steering towards themes of Chinese language political unity when requested to mock Xi Jinping, whereas specializing in Trump’s character 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 of 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 internet looking

MiniMax-M1’s internet looking capabilities are a great function for these utilizing it through the official chatbot interface. Nonetheless, 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 applicable lodging, and delivered a complete itinerary. Nonetheless, the prices, which should be up to date in actual time, weren’t based mostly on actual info.

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

For extra devoted duties, MiniMax presents a devoted brokers tab with capabilities corresponding to Manus—performance that ChatGPT and Claude have not matched. The platform offers 1,000 free AI credit for testing these brokers, although that is simply sufficient for mild testing duties.

We tried to create a customized agent for enhanced journey planning—which might have solved the issue of the shortage of internet 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 extreme verification and hypothetical eventualities.

We prompted the same old thriller story from the BIG-bench dataset that we usually use, and the ending outcome was incorrect as a result of mannequin overthinking the difficulty, evaluating prospects that weren’t even talked about within the story. The entire Chain of Thought took the mannequin over 700 seconds—a file for this sort of “easy” reply.

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

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

Verdict

MiniMax-M1 isn’t good, but it surely delivers fairly good capabilities for a free mannequin, providing real competitors to paid providers 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 sometimes locked behind paywalls.

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

This can be a mannequin that may higher serve customers requiring reasoning duties—however remains to be an awesome free various for these looking for a chatbot for on a regular basis use that isn’t actually mainstream.

You possibly can obtain the open supply mannequin right here.