MiniMax-M1 open-weight, large-scale hybrid-attention reasoning model
29 comments
·June 18, 2025swyx
1. this is apparently MiniMax's "launch week" - they did M1 on Monday and Hailuo 2 on Tuesday (https://news.smol.ai/issues/25-06-16-chinese-models). remains to be seen if they can keep up the pace of model releases for the rest of this week - these 2 were big ones, they aren't yet known for much else beyond llm and video models. just watch https://x.com/MiniMax__AI for announcements.
2. minimax m1's tech report is worthwhile: https://github.com/MiniMax-AI/MiniMax-M1/blob/main/MiniMax_M... while they may not be the SOTA open weights model, they do make some very big/notable claims on lightning attention and their GRPO variant (CISPO).
(im unaffiliated, just sharing what ive learned so far since no comments have been made here yet
vintermann
"We publicly release MiniMax-M1 at this https url" in the arxiv paper, and it isn't a link to an empty repo!
I like these people already.
noelwelsh
A few thoughts:
* A Singapore based company, according to LinkedIn. There doesn't seem to be much of a barrier to entry to building a very good LLM.
* Open weight models + the development of Strix Halo / Ryzen AI Max makes me optimistic that running great LLMs locally will be relatively cheap in a few years.
manc_lad
It seems more and more like an inevitability we will run models locally. Exciting and concerning implications.
If anyone has any suggestions of people thinking about this space they respect, I'd love to listen to more ideas and thoughts on the developments.
noelwelsh
I think the main limitation, right now, is hardware. For GPUs the main limit is the VRAM available on consumer models. CPUs have plenty of memory but don't have the bandwidth or vector compute power for LLMs. This is why I think the Strix Halo is so exciting: it has bandwidth + compute power plus a lot of memory. It's not quite where it needs to be to replace a dedicated GPU, but in a few iterations it could be.
I'm interested in other opinions. I'm no expert on this stuff.
jb1991
How does the shared memory model for GPUs on Apple Silicon factor into this? These are technically consumer grade and not very expensive, but they can offer a huge amount of memory since all the memory is shared between CPU and GPU, even a midtier machine can easily have 100 GB of GPU memory.
pantulis
Honest question: what is the concerning aspect to it?
htrp
They apparently building buzz for an IPO
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-18/alibaba-b...
markkitti
Please come up with better names for these models. This sounds like the processor in my Mac Studio.
diggan
Also sounds like my long lost dog whose name was Max but he was tiny. Absolutely horrible name, borderline criminal I say.
chvid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax
They named themselves after a classic ai algorithm.
npteljes
This is stated nowhere on the official pages, but it's a Chinese company.
iLoveOncall
Why would you expect them to mention that on their project's page?
noelwelsh
1. It's conventional to do so.
2. It's a legal requirement in some jurisdictions (e.g. https://www.gov.uk/running-a-limited-company/signs-stationer...)
3. It's useful for people who may be interested in applying for jobs
diggan
> 1. It's conventional to do so.
I can't say I remember any model/weights release including the nation where the authors happen to live or where the company is registered. Usually they include some details about what languages they've included to train on, and disclose some of their relationships, which you could use for inferring that from.
But is it really a convention to include the nation the company happen to be registered in, or where the authors live, in submitted papers? I think that'd stick out more to me, than a paper missing such a detail.
spinningarrow
> It's conventional to do so
Where do you see that? e.g. I just checked https://openai.com/about/ and it doesn't say where they are based. I have no associations either way, but I usually have to work hard to find out where startups are based.
iLoveOncall
1. No it's not. Top GitHub repository from Google as an example: https://github.com/google/material-design-icons I think you'd actually be hard pressed to find a single repository where the company that owns it lists where they are registered.
2. This is a requirement for companies registered in the UK. You should also read your own link, it doesn't say anything about the company's presence on 3rd party websites.
3. This is such a remote reason it's laughable, there are plenty more things that are more relevant to potential job applications, such as whether they are hiring at all or not.
You just want them to mention it because it's a Chinese company. If they were American, Mexican, German or Zimbabwean you wouldn't give the slightest fuck.
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insider123
[dead]
In case you're wondering what it takes to run it, the answer is 8x H200 141GB [1] which costs $250k [2].
1. https://github.com/MiniMax-AI/MiniMax-M1/issues/2#issuecomme...
2. https://www.ebay.com/itm/335830302628