Chinese tech firm Xiaomi reaped returns from its artificial intelligence spending in 2025 that “far exceeded expectations”, the company’s president Lu Weibing said in a recorded video posted on Chinese social media platform Douyin.
Lu said the Beijing-based company was pivoting to embodied AI after heavy investment in general AI over the past few quarters. The Beijing-based company’s efforts to apply AI in electric vehicles (EVs) and robotics are similar to Elon Musk’s plan of using the advanced technology in Tesla cars and Optimus humanoids.
“Our progress in AI large models and applications has far exceeded our expectations,” Lu said on Wednesday, adding that the company believed the deep integration of AI with the physical world represented the next generation of intelligent technology.
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The smartphone and EV maker launched its first AI model, MiMo, in April. It recently open-sourced MiMo-Embodied, a model that demonstrated “state-of-the-art performance in both autonomous driving and embodied AI tasks”, according to Xiaomi.
Customers try Xiaomi 17 series smartphones at a company store in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, on September 27, 2025. Photo: VCG via Getty Images alt=Customers try Xiaomi 17 series smartphones at a company store in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, on September 27, 2025. Photo: VCG via Getty Images>
China has seen a surge of interest in the adoption of AI in the EV sector. Xiaomi debuted its premium SU7 Ultra in February, integrating the company’s Hyper-Autonomous Driving technology, a smart driving system.
Interest has also grown in embodied AI, the integration of the technology into physical systems. Xiaomi ramped up investment in the robotics sector following the debut of its robot dog in 2021 and a humanoid prototype in 2022.
Lu emphasised that Xiaomi was “hungry for talent”. The company’s MiMo team recently hired Luo Fuli, a former researcher at DeepSeek who was a key contributor to the Chinese AI start-up’s V2 model. Luo is scheduled to speak at Xiaomi’s developer conference on December 17, as head of the MiMo team.
Xiaomi’s smart EV, AI and other new initiatives turned a profit for the first time in the third quarter. The businesses collectively generated a record 29 billion yuan (US$4.1 billion) in revenue in the quarter, up 199 per cent year on year. Xiaomi’s total revenue for the quarter increased 22 per cent year on year to 113.1 billion yuan.
finance.yahoo.com
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