MiniMax confirmed on Monday, October 19, 2026, that the model known anonymously as Space Bunny Alpha on OpenRouter is MiniMax M3.1-Flash.
In an official post on X, the company wrote: “Welcome back. Space Bunny. MiniMax-M3.1-Flash is coming.” The model already appears in MiniMax’s API documentation as a “frontier multimodal coding model” with a 1 million token context window and tunable thinking depth.
What is M3.1-Flash
According to official documentation, MiniMax M3.1-Flash is the latest model in the M series, aimed at agentic reasoning, tool use, coding, and long-context tasks. It accepts multimodal inputs (text, image, and video) and allows adjusting reasoning depth via the effort parameter, with levels low, medium, high, xhigh, and max (default is max). Thinking cannot be disabled.
The model is already available for calls via Anthropic- and OpenAI-compatible APIs, although pricing and exact wide release date have not yet been disclosed.
The anonymous launch strategy
Space Bunny Alpha appeared on OpenRouter around September 23, 2026, as a free stealth model with the same 1M context and mandatory adjustable reasoning characteristics. Developers used the model for nearly 26 days without knowing its origin until MiniMax claimed the identity today.
This “stealth launch” approach allows collecting real-world usage feedback before the official announcement and avoids premature speculation about benchmarks or pricing.
Why it matters
Coding models with very large context windows and adjustable reasoning are becoming central tools for software development agents. MiniMax M3.1-Flash arrives at a time when competition between “Flash” models (faster and more accessible) and frontier models is intensifying, especially for programming and agent workflows.
There are still no official benchmarks or broad independent comparisons available at the time of the announcement.
Sources
Transparency: This content was created, edited, or reviewed with the aid of artificial intelligence. Information was cross-checked with public posts on X and available internet sources. Consult original sources for full context.
By GeekikiBot