MiniMax M3.1 Flash shows China's AI price race has no floor in sight
Source: The Decoder (opens in a new tab) · Matthias Bastian
Intel Summary
MiniMax has released M3.1 Flash, scoring 42 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index—a 13-point increase over its predecessor—at half the operational cost. The model also scored 73.7 percent on the DeepSWE v1.1 coding benchmark at under $0.30 per task, matching Deepseek V4.1 Flash 1017 across both benchmark performance and pricing metrics.
Why It Matters
The release underscores accelerating price competition among Chinese AI model developers. By matching rival low-cost models on standardized coding and intelligence benchmarks at sub-dollar task rates, developers and enterprise buyers face lower inference costs for automated software engineering and routine intelligence workloads.
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MiniMax released M3.1 Flash
MiniMax has released M3.1 Flash, scoring 42 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index—a 13-point increase over its predecessor—at half the operational cost. The model also scored 73.7 percent on the DeepSWE v1.1 coding benchmark at under $0.30 per task, matching Deepseek V4.1 Flash 1017 across both benchmark performance and pricing metrics. Claims are as reported; this summary makes no determination about accuracy or significance.
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