Why is Xiaomi doubling down on in-house chips despite profit slump?

Xiaomi unveiled its flagship Xring O3 3nm AI processor for smartphones, scheduled to debut in September aboard its Xiaomi 18 Fold, alongside a 6nm Xring O100 AI accelerator and a 3nm Xring D100 chip for autonomous driving, with commercial deployment of the latter two next year. Analysts say the move positions Xiaomi in the top tier of China's self-developed mobile systems-on-a-chip, despite an earnings slump and rising component costs.

Why is Xiaomi doubling down on in-house chips despite profit slump? Chinese tech giant’s Xring O3 3nm AI processor scheduled to debut aboard folding smartphone in September Iris Deng /author/iris-deng in Shenzhen Xiaomi’s long-term push into proprietary silicon is laying the groundwork for complex artificial intelligence workloads on smartphones and cars, analysts say, as the Chinese tech giant doubles down on self-developed chips despite an earnings slump and soaring component costs. On Monday it unveiled its flagship Xring O3 3-nanometre AI processor for smartphones, which is scheduled to debut in September aboard its Xiaomi 18 Fold smartphone. The company has also introduced the Xring O100 – a 6nm AI accelerator designed to boost Xiaomi’s MiMo large language model when paired with the O3 – alongside a 3nm Xring D100 chip for autonomous driving. Xiaomi said both the O100 and D100 will be deployed commercially next year. Ivan Lam, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, said Xiaomi’s semiconductor progress placed it in “the top tier of China’s self-developed mobile systems-on-a-chip SoC ”. “In the current age of AI, on-chip AI performance has become even more critical as AI workloads are becoming more complex,” Lam said, adding that while semiconductor investments yielded no immediate financial returns, Xiaomi’s long-term commitment remained positive. Xiaomi’s chip expansion comes as the global smartphone industry grapples with surging memory and component costs, squeezing profit margins across handsets and electric vehicles.