YAN Junjie (闫俊杰)
Founder, Chairman, CEO and CTO, MiniMax
YAN Junjie (闫俊杰, born 1989) is the Founder, Chairman, CEO, and CTO of MiniMax (稀宇科技), one of China's leading AI companies. Born in a small county in Henan province, he taught himself advanced calculus in high school.
He earned his B.S. from Southeast University (2006-2010) and his Ph.D. from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Automation (2015), followed by postdoctoral work at Tsinghua University. He joined SenseTime in 2015, rising to Vice President and CTO of the Smart Cities business group, leading 700+ people.
In late 2021, he left SenseTime to found MiniMax, which IPO'd on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on January 9, 2026, becoming one of the first listed large-model companies. MiniMax's public valuation has moved quickly: media reports put its March 2026 market cap above HK$380 billion (~$49B), while the atlas's money view uses a later May 7, 2026 mark of HK$257.3 billion (~$33B).
MiniMax serves 2.36 billion users across 200+ countries with products including Hailuo AI, Talkie, and MiniMax Agent.
