Chinese AI leader MiniMax has raised its cloud computing purchase agreement with Alibaba Group to $1.2 billion over three years, reflecting accelerating demand for computing resources as its AI models and applications scale rapidly.
- MiniMax raises cloud spending cap with Alibaba from $380M to $1.2B through 2028
- Annual limits rise to $400M in 2027 and $500M in 2028 to fuel AI model development
- API usage budget grows over tenfold, signaling expansion in live AI service demand
What happened
MiniMax, a leading Chinese AI company known for its large language models and video-generation technology, has increased its cloud computing budget with Alibaba Group by 220%, pushing the three-year cap to $1.2 billion. The company revealed in filings that it intends to spend up to $300 million on Alibaba Cloud services in 2026, almost triple the initial limit of $115 million.
Under the updated pact, MiniMax's annual spending ceiling on Alibaba Cloud jumps from $125 million to $400 million in 2027, and from $135 million to $500 million in 2028. Moreover, its API service budget for 2026 was raised from $650,000 to $7.5 million, reflecting a nearly 20-fold increase in total API spending over three years.
Why it matters
The expanded cloud contract underscores rising compute requirements driven by the rapid growth of MiniMax’s AI workloads, including both foundational model training and inference tasks for generative AI applications. MiniMax's first-half revenue soared 283%, with a 700% leap in enterprise sales, fueling demand for scalable and high-performance cloud infrastructure.
China’s generative AI industry is shifting from primarily training foundational models to increasingly heavy inference workloads, especially to support agentic AI capabilities. Alibaba’s cloud and AI business growth, including deployment of its own AI chip, aligns with this trend, positioning it as a key infrastructure partner for AI companies like MiniMax.
What to watch next
MiniMax is building its own independent compute cluster featuring domestic AI chips to complement its Alibaba cloud partnership. Monitoring the balance between third-party cloud dependency and in-house infrastructure development will provide insights into its long-term AI strategy and cost management.
Further developments in MiniMax’s upcoming models, such as M3.1 and H3.1, and their corresponding cloud usage will be important to track, as they likely drive future scaling of compute demands. Additionally, Alibaba’s continued investment in AI hardware and cloud services could influence competitive dynamics in China's AI infrastructure market.