MiniMax Founder Becomes Second AI Entrepreneur to Meet China’s Premier

On the afternoon of January 19, China’s Premier Li Qiang chaired a symposium with experts and representatives from business, science and education, culture, health, and sports. The meeting solicited opinions and suggestions on two draft documents: the Government Work Report and the Outline of the “15th Five-Year Plan” (Draft).

Yan Junjie, Founder and CEO of MiniMax (or 稀宇科技), attended the symposium and delivered remarks, becoming the second representative of an AI foundation model company to participate, following Liang Wenfeng, Founder of DeepSeek.

To date, MiniMax has served more than 212 million users across over 200 countries and regions, as well as enterprise clients from more than 100 countries and regions, with over 70% of its revenue coming from overseas markets.

On January 9 this year, MiniMax rang the opening bell at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It took the company only four years from founding to listing, setting a record for the fastest IPO among AI companies. In his listing speech, Yan said: “Over the past four years, we started from scratch and, with a group of young people, built world-leading multimodal capabilities and served more than 200 million users globally—but this is only the beginning.”

MiniMax currently has 385 employees, with an average age of 29. Nearly all are born after 1995, and R&D staff account for 73.8% of the workforce, reflecting an exceptionally high concentration of talent. It is understood that about one-third of MiniMax’s employees have overseas education or work experience.

Participants list:

1. Ming Ming（明明）
   Chief Economist, CITIC Securities

2. He Jia（贺佳）
   Vice Dean, School of Finance, Nankai University

3. Yan Junjie（闫俊杰）
   Founder and Chief Executive Officer, MiniMax (Xiyu Technology)

4. Zhang Zhigang（张智刚）
   Chairman and Party Secretary, State Grid Corporation of China

5. Gong Qihuang（龚旗煌）
   President, Peking University

6. Yu Xiaohui（余晓晖）
   President, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT)

7. Wang Yongjun（王拥军）
   President, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University

8. Zhou Liya（周莉亚）
   National First-Class Choreographer, China Oriental Performing Arts Group

9. Shi Yuqi（石宇奇）
   Professional Badminton Player, China National Badminton Team

Translation of the official readout of the meeting:

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, January 19 — On the afternoon of January 19, Li Qiang, Member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Premier of the State Council, chaired a symposium with experts and representatives from business, science and education, culture, health, and sports. The meeting solicited opinions and suggestions on two draft documents: the Government Work Report and the Outline of the “15th Five-Year Plan” (Draft).

At the symposium, Ming Ming, He Jia, Yan Junjie, Zhang Zhigang, Gong Qihuang, Yu Xiaohui, Wang Yongjun, Zhou Liya, Shi Yuqi and others spoke in turn. Participants noted that the past year had been highly extraordinary. In the face of a complex and challenging external environment, China strengthened counter-cyclical adjustments and rolled out many pragmatic measures to stabilize growth, optimize economic structure, and improve people’s livelihoods. Positive factors in development continued to accumulate, factor flows remained active, market confidence increased markedly, and the achievements were hard-won. Drawing on their respective fields, the participants also put forward suggestions on economic and social development for this year and for the “15th Five-Year Plan” period.

After listening carefully to the remarks, Li Qiang said that over the past year, under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, China implemented more proactive and effective macroeconomic policies and responded calmly to external shocks. The economy pressed ahead under pressure while moving toward higher quality and greater efficiency. Emerging industries were accelerated in their growth, market demand continued to expand and upgrade, and the economy demonstrated strong resilience and vitality. This year marks the first year of the “15th Five-Year Plan.” While the external environment remains complex and volatile, with increasing uncertainties and new and longstanding challenges, China’s long-term positive fundamentals and underlying trends remain unchanged, and the prospects for high-quality development are broad. As long as confidence is maintained, problems are confronted head-on, and efforts are focused on managing China’s own affairs well, the momentum of steady and positive economic growth can be continuously consolidated and expanded, and the initiative in development firmly grasped.

Li Qiang emphasized the need to thoroughly implement the decisions and arrangements set out in the central authorities’ proposals for the “15th Five-Year Plan” and the Central Economic Work Conference, and to respond to uncertainties in the development environment with the certainty of high-quality development. It is necessary to highlight the goal-oriented approach of high-quality development, implement more proactive fiscal policies and appropriately accommodative monetary policies, enhance the combined effects of different policy tools, and strengthen coordination between reform measures and macroeconomic policies to achieve greater breakthroughs in improving quality and efficiency. Efforts should be made to broaden pathways for high-quality development by strengthening innovation-driven growth, deepening reform and opening up, placing the strategic focus of development on expanding domestic demand, and continuously enhancing endogenous growth momentum. In advancing high-quality development, greater efforts should be made to safeguard and improve people’s livelihoods, closely integrate improving livelihoods with boosting consumption, and balance investment in physical assets with investment in people, cultivate new drivers of economic growth, and continuously enhance public well-being.

Li Qiang expressed the hope that participants would leverage their respective strengths, demonstrate a stronger sense of responsibility, actively reflect real conditions in economic and social development, and offer constructive opinions and suggestions, so as to make greater contributions to promoting high-quality development.

Wu Zhenglong attended the symposium.

The two draft documents—the Government Work Report and the Outline of the “15th Five-Year Plan” (Draft)—have been circulated simultaneously to regions and departments across the country for comments.