CNBC AI News reported on May 19 that Xiaomi founder Lei Jun candidly revealed the company’s enduring ambitions in semiconductor innovation ahead of its upcoming chip announcement on May 22. Speaking to an industry audience, he framed this milestone as both a culmination and a continuation of Xiaomi’s chip-making vision.
The entrepreneur shared that the automotive venture launched in 2021 marked a dual strategic pivot: simultaneously resurrecting the dormant ‘high-end chip’ initiative and reigniting the smartphone SoC development program abandoned years earlier.
“Many still chuckle at the delayed follow-up to Surge S1, but I’d argue those past efforts weren’t shame-faced detours – they were essential stepping stones to our current position,” Lei stated with measured conviction during a recent technical summit.
He retraced Xiaomi’s chip journey to the fateful September 2014 decision point, highlighting the underdog challenge represented by the 2017 introduction of the mid-premium Surge S1 smartphone SoC – a promising start ultimately hindered by unforeseen technical and supply chain hurdles.
‘While those bigger ambitions cooled temporarily, we maintained our core semiconductor competencies through the ‘small chip’ pathway,’ Lei explained, referencing the ecosystem of custom components that have emerged since. ‘Charging solutions like Surge P and C, image-enhancing Surge I, and signal-optimizing Surge A represent specialized but critical building blocks – each teaching us vital lessons in circuit design.’
He acknowledged the passionate community inquiries: ‘Xiaomi fans worldwide have persistently asked if we’d return to making flagship mobile processors, and today’s revelation finally answers.’
Opening the financial books, Lei disclosed that R&D investments in the玄戒 project had exceeded $13.5 billion (¥91.3 billion) since 2021, with current personnel surpassing 2,500 engineers – making the division China’s third-largest fabless semiconductor entity by both workforce scale and capital deployment.
‘At these investment levels surpassing $6 billion annually, we’re not just playing chipmaker hobbyists,’ the CEO emphasized. ‘Entering the smartphone SoC arena requires battlefield-grade commitment – a reality-check those four-year figures objectively confirm.’
The Chinese tech champion’s roadmap now combines both directions – sustaining specialized component development while re-entering the mobile processor arena. Analysts view this as strategic preparation for AI-era device differentiation, particularly with its HyperConnectivity framework demanding optimized chip-level integration.
‘Semiconductors represent not just hardware bets, but software vision records,’ one noted mobile hardware expert told CNBC, drawing parallels between Xiaomi’s revival and MediaTek’s SoC comeback during the mobile revolution. ‘Each chip generation captures accumulated design wisdom – what matters now is transforming that ‘history’ into actionable future architecture.’
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