MiniMax M3.1 Flash shows China's AI price race has no floor in sight

MiniMax has released M3.1 Flash, a new reasoning model that scores 42 points on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. That's 13 points higher than its predecessor M3, at less than half the cost per task. The model ties with GLM-5.3-Flash, edges past Gemini 3.8 Flash (41), and trails Deepseek V4.1 Flash 1017 (45). Complex reasoning saw the biggest improvement. On "Humanity's Last Exam," M3.1 Flash hits 48 percent, beating both Deepseek and GLM.

It also scores 22 percent on the CritPt benchmark, which tests research-level physics reasoning across 71 complex problems. That puts it ahead of GLM-5.3-Flash (15 percent) and Gemini 3.8 Flash (18 percent), and just behind Deepseek (24 percent). For factual accuracy on…