Yan Junjie

Overview

Yan Junjie is a co-founder and chief executive officer of MiniMax, a Chinese artificial intelligence company ^[1][2]. What is publicly recorded of his career centres on that one company: he helped to start it, and he is the executive who took it to the Hong Kong market.

From SenseTime to a new company

Caixin Global's "Who's Who" section describes him as a former SenseTime executive ^[3]. Accounts of how MiniMax was founded differ in their details. Wikipedia says he founded MiniMax in Shanghai in December 2021 together with other computer-vision researchers from SenseTime ^[1]. A Reuters report reprinted by The Standard says MiniMax was founded in early 2022 by Yan Junjie, a former SenseTime executive ^[2]. Both versions connect the company's beginning to him and to people with a SenseTime background; they place the founding a few months apart, and they put the emphasis in different places — Wikipedia on the computer-vision research background of the founding group, Reuters on his role as an executive.

The founding group is described as coming from computer-vision research, the field concerned with getting machines to extract information from images and video. That is the technical starting point of the company he co-founded, and it is the part of his background that the accounts of MiniMax's origins mention most directly.

Leading MiniMax to a Hong Kong listing

On 9 January 2026, Yan Junjie led MiniMax to its listing in Hong Kong ^[1]. Caixin Global's photo caption from the listing ceremony that day names him as the CEO of MiniMax ^[3]. Ahead of the debut, The Standard reported that MiniMax was expected to raise US$538 million in its Hong Kong initial public offering, with the shares scheduled to start trading on 9 January ^[2].

An initial public offering is the step in which a private company sells shares to outside investors for the first time and those shares begin trading on an exchange; for a young company it is both a large fundraise and a lasting change in how the business has to be run. After a listing, a chief executive answers to public shareholders, publishes regular financial results, and spends part of his time on investor relations rather than only on research and products. The Hong Kong listing of 9 January 2026 is therefore the point at which the company he co-founded became a public company, and at which his job widened accordingly ^[1][2].

Where he fits

Yan Junjie's role at MiniMax is that of co-founder and chief executive ^[1][2]. Read together, the record traces a short arc: an executive role at SenseTime, the founding of a company in Shanghai, and the arrival of that company on the Hong Kong market on 9 January 2026 ^[1][2][3]. He is also the person Caixin Global identified, in its coverage of the listing ceremony, as the company's chief executive ^[3].

For anyone following Chinese AI companies, the sequence is the useful thing to hold on to — research background, company founding, public listing — because it shows how a research group turns into a listed business, and who is accountable when it does.