MiniMax-M2

Probably one of the surprise releases this month: Minimax, whose previous models were usually behind the claimed performance, really took a leap forward with M2, putting them squarely into the spotlight. They also speedrun the (Chinese) model release playbook, something we observed in the past and was perfected by the likes of Alibaba (Qwen), Moonshot (Kimi) and Zhipu (GLM):

1. Build a social media presence, mainly on Twitter. This increasingly means that researchers are also active aside from the corporate / brand accounts.
2. Release a new model with (Western) launch partners and ecosystem support on day zero, from vLLM to OpenRouter and tools like Cline. To really get it off the ground, offer free access to the API for a limited time.
3. Offer a coding subscription which is compatible with Claude Code (or fork a CLI) while undercutting their pricing.
4. Develop your own tooling and train the next model to work even better with it.

This strategy, of course, is working: Zhipu reportedly has over 100K international API users and 3M chatbot users.