Chinese Startup MiniMax Debuts M3, Challenging Top Models at a Fraction of the Cost
Chinese startup MiniMax has released its M3 LLM, claiming benchmark performance comparable to GPT-5.5 at just 5-10% of the cost, disrupting the enterprise AI market.
Chinese startup MiniMax has released its M3 LLM, claiming benchmark performance comparable to GPT-5.5 at just 5-10% of the cost, disrupting the enterprise AI market.
Xiaomi has unveiled the 1-trillion parameter MiMo-V2-Pro, while MiniMax released the self-evolving M2.7 model. Both models demonstrate performance levels comparable to GPT-5.2 but at a significantly lower operational cost. These developments signal a major leap for Chinese AI capabilities in 2026, likely triggering a global price war and a shift in the AI hierarchy.
Nothing CEO Carl Pei predicts the end of the smartphone app era, replaced by intent-aware AI agents. Supported by breakthroughs like MiniMax M2.7 and Microsoft Fabric IQ, AI will soon handle complex user tasks directly, transforming apps into background services and reshaping mobile hardware and software development.