Chinese tech giant Xiaomi has entered the competitive artificial intelligence (AI) world by unveiling its first large language model (LLM), MiMo. The move highlights Xiaomi’s commitment to building powerful AI systems that work closely with its smartphones, electric vehicles (EVs), and smart home devices.
Xiaomi launches its own AI model
On April 26, Xiaomi introduced its new open-source AI model, MiMo, which is designed to handle advanced reasoning tasks. The model includes 7 billion parameters and has performed well in math and coding tasks. MiMo outperformed OpenAI’s o1-mini and Alibaba’s Qwen series model, QwQ-32B-Preview, in testing.
This achievement shows that Xiaomi is not only following in the footsteps of major tech players like Alibaba and Baidu but is also pushing ahead with its high-performing technology. The company’s AI development team, called Core, used reinforcement learning to build MiMo, which marks a key step in Xiaomi’s AI journey.
MiMo’s release confirms earlier reports that Xiaomi invested in large-scale computing power. In December, the company was said to have purchased around 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) to support the training of its AI models.
Market impact and strategic goals
Following the announcement, Xiaomi’s shares on the Hong Kong stock market rose by 5.3% to HK$49.95. This positive market reaction also helped boost Kingsoft Cloud Holdings, a company in which Xiaomi owns a 10% stake and Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun holds 11%. Shares in Kingsoft Cloud climbed by 14.2% to HK$7.4.
Xiaomi’s broader strategy is to integrate home-grown AI into its product ecosystem. The company sees a future in which its intelligent models power its smartphones, EVs, and home appliances. This aligns with Xiaomi’s plan, announced last May, to create AI tools tailored to its technology platforms.
Recently, Xiaomi attempted to hire Luo Fuli, a young AI expert known as China’s “genius girl.” Luo helped develop the DeepSeek-V2 model, which is respected in China’s AI field. Though she turned down the offer, Xiaomi’s attempt to bring her on board shows how serious it is about strengthening its AI team.
Fierce competition in China’s AI market
Xiaomi’s launch comes as China’s major tech firms ramp up efforts to release their foundation models, powerful AI models designed to be adapted for different uses. On April 23, Alibaba revealed the third generation of its Qwen models. These new models are faster and better at handling multiple languages. The Qwen3 range now includes eight model sizes, ranging from 600 million to a massive 235 billion parameters.
Other tech firms, such as ByteDance, Tencent, and Baidu, are also rolling out new AI tools. Baidu recently launched Ernie 4.5 Turbo, showing that Chinese companies are rapidly progressing in AI development.
Despite launching after DeepSeek and Alibaba, Xiaomi believes it still has a good chance of reaching artificial general intelligence (AGI)—a point where AI matches or exceeds human intelligence. Xiaomi said, “The year 2025 may feel like the second half of the AI model race, but we strongly believe that the road to AGI is still long.”
With MiMo, Xiaomi is now firmly in the AI race, joining other giants in shaping the future of intelligent technology in China and beyond.
