Xiaomi History
Xiaomi was founded in 2010 in Beijing by Lei Jun along with six associates. Lei had previously served as an executive at Kingsoft and founded Joyo.com, which was sold to Amazon for $75 million in 2004. Dissatisfied with existing smartphone products, Lei set out to build a better alternative at an accessible price point.
In August 2011, Xiaomi released its first smartphone, and by 2014 it held the largest market share of smartphones sold in China. The company expanded into a vast ecosystem of consumer electronics, from smart home devices to wearables, and by 2020 was selling nearly 150 million smartphones annually with over 500 million monthly active MIUI users.
In August 2022, Lei Jun personally unveiled CyberOne at a company event in Beijing, beating Tesla's Optimus to the public stage. Standing 177 cm tall and weighing 52 kg, CyberOne can detect human faces, identify 45 human emotions, and create 3D maps of its environment. It was positioned as a research and development platform for Xiaomi's AI capabilities.
CyberOne has since moved from demonstration to factory deployment. At Xiaomi's EV factory, the humanoid robot completed a three-hour continuous autonomous run at a self-tapping nut installation station, achieving a 90.2% dual-side success rate while meeting the factory's 76-second takt time requirement. Xiaomi continues to iterate on its humanoid platform as part of its broader expansion into electric vehicles and physical AI.
