Lu Weibing, president of Chinese technology company Xiaomi, said in a recorded video posted on Chinese social media platform Douyin that the return on artificial intelligence spending in 2025 “far exceeds expectations.”
Lu said the Beijing-based company is moving toward physical AI after investing heavily in general artificial intelligence over the past few quarters. The Beijing-based company’s efforts to apply artificial intelligence to electric vehicles (EVs) and robotics are similar to Elon Musk’s plans to use advanced technology in Tesla cars and Optimus Prime humanoid robots.
“Our progress on large AI 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 represents the next generation of smart technology.
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The smartphone and electric car maker launched its first artificial intelligence model, MiMo, in April. According to Xiaomi, the company recently open-sourced MiMo-Embodied, a model that demonstrates “state-of-the-art performance in autonomous driving and specific artificial intelligence tasks.”
On September 27, 2025, a customer tried out Xiaomi Mi 17 series smartphones at a company store in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. Photo: VCG via Getty Images alt=A customer tries out a Xiaomi Mi 17 series smartphone at a company store in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, September 27, 2025. Photo: VCG via Getty Images>
China has seen a surge in interest in adopting artificial intelligence in electric vehicles. Xiaomi launched the high-end SU7 Ultra in February, integrating the company’s super autonomous technology, known as the Intelligent Driving System.
Interest in embedded artificial intelligence—the integration of technology into physical systems—is also growing. After launching a robot dog in 2021 and a humanoid prototype in 2022, Xiaomi has increased its investment in the field of robotics.
Lu stressed that Xiaomi is “hungry for talent.” The company’s MiMo team recently hired former DeepSeek researcher Luo Fuli, who was a key contributor to the Chinese AI startup’s V2 model. Luo Ding will speak at the Xiaomi Developer Conference on December 17 as the head of the MiMo team.
Xiaomi’s new initiatives such as smart EV and AI achieved profitability for the first time in the third quarter. In total, these businesses generated record revenue of 29 billion yuan ($4.1 billion) in the quarter, a year-on-year increase of 199%. Xiaomi’s total revenue in the quarter increased by 22% year-on-year to 113.1 billion yuan.