August 16, 2026

MiniMax's new open M2.5 and M2.5 Lightning near state-of-the-art while costing 1/20th of Claude Opus 4.6

architectural photography of black and brown hallway
Nastuh Abootalebi / Unsplash

Chinese AI startup MiniMax, headquartered in Shanghai, has sent shockwaves through the AI industry today with the release of its new M2.5 language model in two variants, which promises to make high-end artificial intelligence so cheap you might stop...