MiniMax expands Alibaba cloud pact as compute needs surge for training and inference

Chinese AI firm burns through two-thirds of its cloud budget by June, forcing a dramatic increase in its Alibaba deal ceiling

The Shanghai-based company planned to spend up to US$300 million on Alibaba Cloud services this year, nearly triple its original US$115 million cap, after burning through two-thirds of its budget by the end of June, according to its Hong Kong stock exchange filings on Wednesday.

In a separate revision, MiniMax expanded its application programming interface (API) service budget with Alibaba, raising the 2026 cap from US$650,000 to US$7.5 million, an over tenfold increase. This brings its three-year API spending ceiling to US$62.5 million, a nearly 20-fold jump from previous limits.

The aggressive revisions reflect MiniMax’s expanding compute needs for both model training and live inference.

Known for its M-series large language models, the H3 video-generation model and popular consumer app Hailuo AI, MiniMax this week reported a 283 per cent surge in first-half revenue to US$116.6 million, driven by a 700 per cent leap in enterprise sales.