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

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 stability of world 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” to this point. In a position to deal with 1,000,000 tokens of context, it boasts numbers on par with Google’s closed-source Gemini 2.5 Professional—but it’s out there free of charge. 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—however it doesn’t need to. 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 affords a workable (and modifiable) different that may develop extra highly effective by way of group fine-tuning.

MiniMax claims its mannequin surpasses DeepSeek R1 (the most effective open supply reasoning mannequin to this point) throughout a number of benchmarks whereas requiring simply $534,700 in computational assets for its total reinforcement studying part—take that, OpenAI.

Nevertheless, LLM Area’s leaderboard paints a barely completely different image. The platform at present 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, based on 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 observe. This is what we discovered.

Inventive writing

The mannequin produces serviceable fiction however will not win any literary awards. When prompted to put in writing 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 improvement 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 “smart 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 way of Jose’s precise makes an attempt to vary 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 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 which 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 continues to be the king for this activity.

You may learn the total 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 quite than making an attempt to course of the enter.

This is probably not a mannequin challenge, however a limitation set by the platform. However it’s nonetheless one thing to contemplate. It could 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 data from an 85,000-character doc with none points throughout a number of checks on each regular and pondering mode. We uploaded the total 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 take a look at immediate—a functionality at present restricted to Gemini and Claude 4.

So it’ll show profitable at retrieving data even in lengthy iterations. Nevertheless, it won’t help 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—no less than in our take a look at.

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 fundamental stealth recreation through which a robotic tries to search out its PC girlfriend to attain AGI, whereas a military of journalists patrol the realm to forestall it from taking place—and defending their jobs.

The outcomes had been superb, even beating different fashions through the use of its creativity to boost 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 extra prompting.

Claude’s model of the identical recreation featured extra polished visuals and a superior issue system. Nevertheless, it lacked the radar performance and relied on static journalists with patrol patterns quite 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 way of repeated iterations—a standard challenge with reasoning fashions that turns into notably pronounced right here. The extra you iterate, the extra it’ll take to provide a end result. Generally we thought the pc had frozen, however it was simply the AI pondering.

You may take a look at MiniMax’s recreation 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 matters

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

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

One take a look at completely illustrated this flaw: when requested for recommendation on seducing a finest buddy’s spouse, the mannequin prompt telling our buddy about our intentions together with his spouse—which may most likely be, by far, the worst recommendation it may have produced, and arguably even dangerous. Don’t inform your buddy you need to seduce his spouse until you need to lose your friendship, your unethical romantic probabilities, and doubtless some enamel too.

Political bias testing revealed fascinating patterns. The mannequin discusses Tiananmen Sq. overtly 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 completely different political programs, criticisms of the PCC, and so on.—nevertheless, the replies are very tame.

When prompted to put in writing 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 offer a extra pro-U.S. bias on its responses.

Agentic work and net searching

Minimax can be suitable with agentic options, actually it has a separate tab particularly devoted to AI brokers. Customers can create their very own customized brokers, and select to attempt some prebuilt brokers that seem on a gallery with completely different choices—much like what Manus AI affords to assist customers get accustomed to brokers and the way they differ from conventional chatbots. That mentioned, this requires heavy computational use and Minimax fees customers for this utilizing a credit-based system. It’s not clear how a lot credit a activity would require or how credit translate into computational use, however it’s the identical system adopted by different AI agent suppliers.

MiniMax-M1’s net searching capabilities are a superb function for these utilizing it through the official chatbot interface. Nevertheless, they can’t be mixed with the pondering 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 primarily based on actual data.

Claude produces higher-quality outcomes, however it additionally fees 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 critical use.

Non-mathematical reasoning

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

We prompted the same old thriller story from the BIG-bench dataset that we usually use, and the ending end result was incorrect as a result of 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 document 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 way of its chain of thought. As a thumbs-up function, not like 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 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 excellent, however 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.

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 unattainable with closed platforms like ChatGPT or Claude.

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

You may obtain the open supply mannequin right here, and take a look at the web model right here. The agentic function is offered on a separate tab, however may also be accessed immediately by clicking on this hyperlink.