MiniMax's new open M2.5 and M2.5 Lightning near state-of-the-art while costing 1/20th of Claude Opus 4.6

Chinese AI startup MiniMax, headquartered in Shanghai, has sent shockwaves through the AI industry today with the release of its new M2.5 language model in two variants, which promises to make high-end artificial intelligence so cheap you might stop worrying about the bill entirely. It's also said to be "open source," though the weights (settings) and code haven't been posted yet, nor has the exact license type or terms. But that's almost beside the point given how cheap MiniMax is serving it through its API and those of partners.For the last few years, using the world’s most powerful AI was like hiring an expensive consultant—it was brilliant, but you watched the clock (and the token count) constantly. M2.5 changes that math, dropping the cost of the frontier by as much as 95%.By deliveri