Lei Jun signals a full-court press on AI as Xiaomi reportedly pledges at least ¥60 billion over three years

Xiaomi's big bet

It has been reported that Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi (小米), plans to invest at least 60 billion yuan in the AI field over the next three years — a public escalation of the company's ambitions. The announcement coincides with Xiaomi's March 19 unveiling of new base models, including Xiaomi MiMo‑V2‑Pro, MiMo‑V2‑Omni and the TTS voice synthesis variant, signaling a move from chat systems toward agent‑style, multi‑modal intelligence. Early, anonymous test builds of the new models briefly topped daily API call charts on OpenRouter, reportedly prompting industry speculation that they were derived from DeepSeek technology; Lei Jun later said MiMo‑V2‑Pro ranks highly on global model metrics and even placed ahead of xAI's Grok on certain brand‑level comparisons.

Talent, traction and the changing playbook

Xiaomi's renewed push is not just about money. The company recently hired Luo Fuli (罗福莉), the former DeepSeek core developer who led DeepSeek‑V2 and previously worked at Alibaba DAMO Academy (阿里达摩院), and that hire has been framed as a turning point in professionalizing Xiaomi's AI research. Luo's arc — from graduate student to author on multiple ACL‑related projects, to architect of cost‑efficient inference in DeepSeek‑V2 — is being spotlighted as emblematic of why Xiaomi believes it can accelerate. There have been controversies and clarifications around academic credits, and Luo herself has sought a quieter working life, but the talent scramble across China’s big tech firms is unmistakable.

Why this matters — and what could slow it down

For Western readers: this is happening against a backdrop of global tech competition and tighter export controls on advanced semiconductors. Those constraints make software efficiency, clever model architectures and domestic talent even more important for Chinese AI leaders. Xiaomi had publicly distanced itself from “OpenAI‑style” general models as recently as 2023; now the company appears to be reversing course. But money buys talent and servers, not unfettered access to top‑end chips or international markets — and regulatory scrutiny, both at home and abroad, could shape how far and fast Xiaomi can go. Will 60 billion yuan be enough to close the gap with established AI giants? That is the question investors and rivals will be watching closely.