MiniMax expands Alibaba cloud pact as compute needs surge for training and inference
Chinese artificial intelligence firm MiniMax has raised the three-year purchase ceiling on its cloud computing deals with Alibaba Group Holding by 220 per cent to US$1.2 billion, underscoring surging demand for computing power among the country’s top AI developers. The Shanghai-based company planned to spend up to US$300 million on Alibaba Cloud services this year, nearly triple its original…
MiniMax, a Chinese AI firm, has significantly increased its cloud computing deal with Alibaba Group Holding, raising the purchase ceiling by 220% to US$1.2 billion. This surge in demand for computing power among top AI developers is reflected in MiniMax's plan to spend up to US$300 million on Alibaba Cloud services this year, nearly tripling its original budget.
The revised agreement through 2028 sees annual spending limits on Alibaba Cloud services jump to US$400 million for 2027 and US$500 million for 2028, while its application programming interface (API) service budget has been expanded tenfold, with a new 2026 cap of US$7.5 million. These revisions highlight MiniMax's expanding compute needs for model training and live inference, driven by its M-series large language models, H3 video-generation model, and popular consumer app Hailuo AI.
The aggressive revisions also underscore an industry-wide shift in China's generative AI landscape from foundational model training to scaling compute-heavy inference workloads.
Brief written by urgent.news from South China Morning Post's own syndicated text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
