(Yicai) March 11 -- MiniMax Group, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup that went public two months ago, has seen its market capitalization surpass that of internet stalwart Baidu following a steep run-up in its share price.

After soaring 24 percent on March 9 and another 22 percent yesterday, MiniMax [HKG: 0100] closed 6.5 percent lower at HKD1,141 (USD145.78) per share in Hong Kong today, giving it a market value of HKD352.2 billion (USD45 billion), versus Baidu’s [HKG: 9888] HKD338.3 billion.

MiniMax’s recent stock rally is driven by the OpenClaw craze, according to industry observers. The Shanghai-based company is one of the officially supported large model providers for OpenClaw, it said on Feb. 27 after launching MaxClaw, a cloud-based AI assistant built based on the AI agent, the day before.

Created by Austrian programmer Peter Steinberger, OpenClaw is a free, open-source AI agent framework that can automate a wide range of tasks for users. The software has garnered enthusiasm in and beyond the tech community since its release last year, with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang last week describing it as the “most important software release probably ever.”

MiniMax, one of China's six "AI tigers," listed on Jan. 9 at an initial public offering price of HKD165. Its market cap has since also exceeded that of leading online travel agency Trip.Com Group and short-video platform Kuaishou.

Analysts said MiniMax overtaking Baidu in market value reflects the triumph of future growth expectations over current profits, adding that the high valuation carries substantial risk. Based on its annual revenue last year, MiniMax’s price-to-sales ratio is 618 times, far exceeding OpenAI’s at roughly 18 times.

MiniMax's income climbed 159 percent to USD79 million in the 12 months ended Dec. 31, with an adjusted net loss of USD251 million, it said in a financial report released on March 2. In comparison, Baidu’s annual revenue topped CNY129.1 billion (USD18.7 billion), more than 239 times that of MiniMax, while net profit sank 76 percent to CNY5.6 billion (USD814.3 million).

Pricing at 50 times revenue might be more reasonable, but MiniMax's market cap is clearly boosted by extremely high growth expectations, an investor told Yicai. In an AI battlefield full of giants, whether the firm can launch solid technologies and make progress will be the key to maintaining its high value, the person added.

Yan Junjie, founder of MiniMax, interned at Baidu's Institute of Deep Learning in 2014. He became one of only eight people in China to win the second Baidu Scholarship, along with CNY200,000 (USD28,930) in research funding.

Editor: Martin Kadiev