MiniMax Turns Hailuo Into Infrastructure

The important shift is that MiniMax is no longer relying on Hailuo as a destination app, it is turning Hailuo into infrastructure that other products sell on top of. When VEED, Envato VideoGen, or fal expose Hailuo inside their own editor or API, the user may feel loyal to that surface, but MiniMax still gets paid for the generation job underneath. That widens distribution far beyond MiniMax's own app install base and helps explain why enterprise and open platform revenue has become the larger part of the business.1 2 3 4 5 6

• This changes who the real customer is. In Hailuo, MiniMax owns the app relationship. In VEED or Envato, the paying workflow belongs to a creator already editing, templating, and exporting inside someone else's product. MiniMax sells the generation engine, while the partner keeps the workspace and user habit.1 2 3 5
• The closest comparable is Kling. It also tries to earn money both from its own studio and from third party distribution, because aggregators and creative suites let model labs reach users they would never acquire directly. The tradeoff is that those same partners make models easier to swap, which pushes competition toward price, speed, and workflow fit.6 7 8
• The revenue mix shows why this matters. MiniMax reported $116.6M of first half 2026 revenue, with $73.9M, or 63.4%, from Open Platform and other enterprise AI services, versus $42.6M from consumer products. That means the business is already leaning more on API and embedded usage than on app level subscriptions alone.4 5

From here, the likely path is more embedded distribution and less dependence on winning the consumer homepage. If Hailuo keeps showing up inside editors, creator tools, and aggregation APIs, MiniMax can grow like a picks and shovels supplier for AI video, while using its own app to showcase new models and pull the highest value users into direct plans.1 2 3 4 6