According to intelligence sources, Zhang Qianchen, the former head of user products at Toutiao and the current product head at MiniMax, has stepped back from company affairs due to personal reasons and is now serving as a product consultant. MiniMax has confirmed this and expressed gratitude for Zhang's contributions. However, insiders reveal that the consultant role is largely symbolic, and Zhang is no longer involved in the business management of MiniMax, effectively equivalent to leaving the company.
Image source: Generated by AI, image licensed by Midjourney
Zhang Qianchen's career has been diverse, having worked at Baidu and Zhihu, and joined ByteDance in 2016, later becoming the head of the user product team at Toutiao. In early 2023, Zhang left to start his own business and subsequently joined MiniMax. Since then, he has led the development of the AI role-playing products "Xingye" and its overseas version "Talkie." According to Sensor Tower, "Talkie" reached 3.8 million downloads in the U.S. market in 2024, ranking among the top AI applications, second only to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Copilot.
Despite significant achievements, Zhang gradually withdrew from the decision-making layer of "Xingye" in the middle of 2024 and began to participate in the daily management of other MiniMax products such as "Hailuo AI." However, in the past two months, Zhang has been on leave, with signs of distancing himself from the business becoming more apparent. Insiders point out that Zhang's departure could have a considerable impact on the future development of "Xingye" and "Hailuo," and MiniMax's immediate priority is to find new leaders for these key products.
With Zhang's departure, MiniMax faces the challenge of losing another core member, aligning with the trend of frequent high-level departures in the large-scale model industry. In July of this year, another MiniMax co-founder, Yang Bin, was also rumored to have left, although the company denied it. The industry has seen a trend of executive changes, and how MiniMax will respond to this wave of personnel turmoil is worth watching.
