MiniMax opens first Tmall flagship store selling M Plan subscriptions
Chinese model maker MiniMax has opened its first official brand flagship store on Tmall, listing its M Plan subscription in three tiers — Go, Explore and Build — available monthly or annually, according to multiple Chinese outlets reporting on Oct 13. AIbase said an opening promotion puts the Go monthly plan at about 24.5 yuan for a first order, a price cited by only one source. The reports also note that Tmall launched a token top-up hub called "AI Space Station" bringing together subscriptions from Alibaba Cloud, Zhipu, Kimi, MiniMax and DeepSeek, and that Zhipu and Qwen Office have already opened stores while Kimi and StepFun are in talks to follow. Model vendors had previously sold subscriptions mainly through their own websites.
Model subscriptions moving onto mainstream e-commerce shelves signals vendors competing for everyday consumers, not just developers.