MiniMax Breaks Issue Price for First Time in Hong Kong; Zhipu Falls 7.1% on Same Day as LLM Price War Continues
On October 22, MiniMax's Hong Kong shares fell more than 7% intraday, hitting a low of HK$158.10 and closing at HK$160.70, below the HK$165 issue price—its first break below the issue price since listing in January this year; on the same day, Zhipu closed down 7.1% at HK$460.80. MiniMax's share price has pulled back about 88% from its high, while Zhipu has pulled back about 85% from its high, with more than HK$1 trillion in market value wiped out. The article attributes the pullbacks to weakness in Hong Kong stocks and the price war: Zhipu launched GLM-5.3-Flash on August 26, pricing it at one-tenth of the flagship GLM-5.3; OpenAI released the GPT-6 series on September 23 and announced a permanent 50% API price cut; MiniMax released M3.1 Flash on October 19, saying the overall cost of use for Agentic tasks is 70% lower than the previous generation.
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The article places the stock pullbacks of the two Hong Kong-listed large-model companies alongside several recent rounds of price cuts, allowing readers to observe how the price war affects valuation logic.
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On October 22, Hong Kong-listed large-model company MiniMax fell more than 7% at one point during intraday trading, hitting a low of HK$158.10 and closing at HK$160.70, officially falling below its IPO price of HK$165. This was MiniMax's first break below its issue price since listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January this year. Zhipu, which along with MiniMax is known as one of the Hong Kong stock market's "two giants of large models," plunged 7.1% the same day to close at HK$460.80.
Both companies listed in January this year and were heavily sought after by capital in the early days of trading: MiniMax's public offering was more than 1,000 times oversubscribed, surging 109% on its first day and reaching a high of HK$1,330 in March; Zhipu hit a high of HK$2,980 on June 22, with its total market value once exceeding HK$1.33 trillion.
However, just a few months later, MiniMax's share price has cumulatively retreated about 88% from its peak, giving back all of its post-listing gains; Zhipu has retreated about 85% from its historical high, with more than HK$1 trillion in market value wiped out. Behind the sharp stock price swings, in addition to the overall weakness of the Hong Kong stock market, is the white-hot price war in the large-model industry.
On August 26, Zhipu launched the GLM-5.3-Flash native multimodal model, pricing it directly at 1/10 of the flagship GLM-5.3, and as low as 1/20 during the limited-time discount period, at RMB 0.80 per million tokens for input and RMB 2.80 for output.
On September 23, OpenAI released the GPT-6 series and announced a permanent 50% API price cut, with the Luna version's input price as low as US$0.10 per million tokens.
On October 19, MiniMax released the new M3.1 Flash model, claiming that for Agentic-type tasks its comprehensive usage cost was reduced by 70% compared with the previous generation, with the input price cut to RMB 1.00 per million tokens and the output price to RMB 4.00.
Financial reports show that both MiniMax and Zhipu saw rapid growth in B-end revenue in the first half of 2026, but they are still in the early stages of commercialization and have not yet achieved overall profitability. Leading vendors cutting prices one after another means unit Token revenue is under pressure, and the market's valuation logic is shifting from "concept premium" to "commercialization delivery." Coupled with heavy lock-up expiry pressure and a wait-and-see mood among southbound funds, the two large-model giants still face a test of valuation digestion in the short term.
(Source: East Money Research Center) Body middle Embedded advertisement