Xiaomi Auto Formally Established With Team of Nearly 300 People

On Wednesday, Lei Jun, Chairman and Founder of Xiaomi, announced via his Weibo account that Xiaomi Auto Co. Ltd has been officially established, with registered capital of 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion). Lei Jun himself serves as the legal representative of the company.

Xiaomi Group also said through its official Weibo account: “In the five months since the announcement of the car-building decision, Xiaomi‘s auto team has conducted a large number of user research and industrial chain inspections. While promoting product definition, we have built a team of nearly 300 people chosen from more than 20,000 candidates. We also look forward to more talent joining us.”

Xiaomi officially announced its entrance into the vehicle industry at the end of March earlier this year. It plans to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to be responsible for the smart electric vehicle business. While the initial investment is 10 billion yuan, it is estimated that total investment over the next 10 years will be about 60 billion yuan. On July 28th, Lei Jun posted a recruitment notice for Xiaomi‘s autonomous driving department on Weibo.

Xiaomi currently has 16,000 engineers, and invested about 10 billion yuan in research and development in 2020, its statement showed. According to its financial report, its Q2 revenue reached 87.8 billion yuan, up 64% year-on-year. The adjusted net profit was 6.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 87.4%.

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Xiaomi also announced on August 25th that it had acquired Beijing-based autonomous driving technology company Deepmotion as part of its strategy to expand into the smart electric vehicle industry.