# "Surged 300 Billion in 60 Days! Henan Young Entrepreneur's 'Shrimp Farming' Struck Gold, Now Investors Are Going Crazy"

These past few days, "shrimp farming" has gone viral across the internet.

Amid this nationwide "shrimp farming" craze, a Chinese AI large model company is the real big winner.

As of the close on March 10th, MiniMax's stock price surged 51% in just two days, with its valuation briefly reaching 380 billion Hong Kong dollars.

This internet company, established just 4 years ago, has already surpassed industry veterans like Kuaishou and Baidu. Its founder is 37-year-old Yan Junjie from Shangqiu, Henan.

Just in January at the Premier's roundtable meeting, the young Yan Junjie became an honored guest, his mature-looking face attracting media attention. The last person to sit in this position was DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng.

Born in 1989 in an ordinary family in a small county town in Shangqiu, Henan, like many rural children, Yan Junjie understood one truth from an early age: education is the most reliable path to change one's destiny. In 2006, he successfully gained admission to Southeast University's School of Mathematics. After that, he continued his studies, completed a master's and PhD at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, then pursued an AI postdoctorate at Tsinghua University.

After completing his postdoctorate, Yan Junjie didn't remain in academia but chose to join SenseTime, where he stayed for 7 years.

Starting as an ordinary employee, with solid mathematical foundations and keen technical acumen, he was promoted step by step to Group Vice President. He also led his team to achieve the industry's leading facial recognition algorithm.

Facial recognition is one of the most critical AI application scenarios. SenseTime's firm footing in this field was largely due to Yan Junjie's team's significant contributions.

Just when SenseTime was preparing for its IPO and everything looked promising, he suddenly decided to resign.

Many couldn't understand why he would give up the prestigious position of vice president at an IPO-bound company to start from scratch as an entrepreneur.

In early 2022, he founded MiniMax in Shanghai. The company name derives from John von Neumann's game theory, meaning finding optimal solutions in adversity—a core philosophy that would guide his entrepreneurial journey.

By then, the domestic AI industry was already heavily saturated, with computing power resources monopolized by American tech giants. Most companies could only follow in others' footsteps, with serious homogenization in competition. Breaking through seemed nearly impossible.

Everyone in the industry was competing for general-purpose large models, racing for computing power and parameters. Yan Junjie went against the grain, abandoning this crowded track and focusing on research and development of MoE (Mixture of Experts) hybrid models.

This choice wasn't favored at the time. Many thought he had "lost his way," abandoning the main road to get stuck in a dead end. But Yan Junjie understood clearly that the MoE model was the key to breaking through.

Traditional large models require activating the entire network with each run, consuming enormous computing power and sky-high costs. MoE models only need to activate partial expert networks to achieve efficient computation, ensuring performance while dramatically reducing costs.

However, this path wasn't easy. MoE models had a fatal flaw—high costs and unstable operation, long an industry challenge that no one could overcome.

To solve this problem, Yan Junjie led his team into the lab, working day and night. They ate instant noodles when hungry and napped at their desks when tired. After half a year of intense effort, they finally achieved a breakthrough in January 2024.

They successfully cracked the core challenge of the MoE model, achieving highly efficient computation at minimal cost. Their M1 model costs just a fraction of OpenAI's equivalent model, directly opening a door for low-cost development of Chinese AI enterprises.

The industry erupted. It turned out that domestic AI could achieve high efficiency without pouring massive resources into computing power.

This technological breakthrough not only secured MiniMax's position but also provided a survival path for countless domestic AI companies, freeing them from dependence on American tech giants' whims.

The technology breakthrough was just the first step. What truly made MiniMax go viral globally was a product called Conch AI.

This full-category multimodal large model supports various content generation including text, video, and voice, with an interface so simple that ordinary users can figure it out without complex technical training.

When Conch AI launched in 2024, it quickly became a sensation overseas, with services covering over 200 countries and regions worldwide. Even many Western users became loyal fans.

What was even more surprising is that over 70% of MiniMax's revenue comes from international markets, making it a benchmark for Chinese AI enterprises going global.

In January 2026, MiniMax successfully completed its IPO. On its first day of trading, the valuation skyrocketed continuously. In just 60 days, its market value surged to 300 billion.

As founder, Yan Junjie's holdings brought his net worth close to 100 billion, transforming him from a poor student from Henan to a tech mogul worth tens of billions.

What's more impressive is that his team has an average age of just 29, achieving financial freedom for all members in just 4 years—a miracle in the startup world.

Today, Yan Junjie hasn't stopped his march forward. He often says this is just the beginning and that he wants to continue deepening work in the AI field, pushing Chinese AI to go global, and enabling more ordinary people to benefit from intelligent technology.

Whether it's rural elderly people using AI voice assistants to make calls or small businesses using AI for copywriting and video creation, he wants AI to truly enter every household and maximize its value.

Many people envy Yan Junjie's success, thinking he's a "chosen one," but only those who understand his journey know there's no such thing as luck.

From a poor student in a small county in Henan, to a Tsinghua postdoctoral fellow, then a vice president at an IPO company, finally to founder of a hundred-billion-dollar-valued company—each step he walked himself.

By avoiding industry saturation, identifying technological breakthroughs, and staying true to his mission of serving ordinary people, that's the key to his success.

Now investors are rushing to buy MiniMax stock not because of luck, but because it has strong technology, quality products, and broad markets.

For us ordinary people, Yan Junjie's story offers an important lesson: whatever you do, find your own direction, don't blindly follow trends, and persist in doing the right thing. Even if it's not well-received at first, as long as you put in the effort, you'll eventually have your moment to shine.