# MiniMax M3 (428B)

> Native multimodal MiniMax model that adds sparse attention to an M2-style MoE backbone for 1M-token context.

| Property | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Lab | MiniMax (China) |
| Released | 2026-06-13 |
| Decoder type | Sparse MoE |
| Family | Sparse MoE |
| Scale | 428B total, 23B active (5.4% active) |
| Context window | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Attention | GQA with QK-Norm and MiniMax Sparse Attention |
| Layer mix | 3 full GQA + 57 MiniMax Sparse Attention |
| KV cache / token (bf16) | 120 KiB (Moderate) |
| License | MiniMax Community License |

**Key detail:** Uses three dense prefix layers, then 57 sparse-attention MoE layers with 128 routed experts and 4 routed plus 1 shared expert active per token.

## Architecture concepts

- [QK-Norm (QK-Norm)](https://llm-atlas-7or.pages.dev/concepts/qk-norm.md): RMSNorm applied to queries and keys before attention to keep logits well-behaved.
- [Grouped-Query Attention (GQA)](https://llm-atlas-7or.pages.dev/concepts/gqa.md): Several query heads share one key/value head, shrinking the KV cache with little quality loss.
- [Mixture of Experts (MoE)](https://llm-atlas-7or.pages.dev/concepts/moe.md): Many feed-forward experts, but a router sends each token to only a few of them.

## Benchmark (Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index)

- AA Intelligence Index v5.0: total 18.7 (Knowledge Work 23.9, Coding 13.9, Science 10.9, General 26.1)
- AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2: total 29.2 (General 36.3, Scientific 21.3, Coding 24.6, Agents 30.7)

## Links

- Architecture diagram: https://sebastianraschka.com/llm-architecture-gallery/images/architectures/minimax-m3.webp
- config.json: https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M3/blob/main/config.json
- License: https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M3/blob/main/LICENSE
- Tech report: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.13392
- Source card (source of truth): https://sebastianraschka.com/llm-architecture-gallery/#card-minimax-m3-428b
- Web page: https://llm-atlas-7or.pages.dev/models/minimax-m3-428b/
- JSON: https://llm-atlas-7or.pages.dev/api/models/minimax-m3-428b.json

_Data from Sebastian Raschka's LLM Architecture Gallery (https://sebastianraschka.com/llm-architecture-gallery/). Synced 2026-11-04._