At his sixth annual speech, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun took the stage with more than just new phones to show off. Alongside the launch of the Xiaomi 17 series, he shared the inside story of how the company has been reinventing itself over the past five years—and, for the first time, detailed the long road to creating Xiaomi’s own XRING chip.
From Internet Brand to Tech Powerhouse
Lei Jun admitted that five years ago, Xiaomi was at a crossroads. The company was growing fast in sales but couldn’t quite crack the premium smartphone market, where Apple reigned supreme. That’s when Xiaomi made a bold decision: stop calling itself an “internet company” and start becoming a true “technology company.”
Central to that shift was a massive bet on research and development. Xiaomi pledged to invest RMB 200 billion into core technologies, with building its own chip as the centerpiece of this strategy.
The Xiaomi 17 Series: Going Head-to-Head with iPhone
The big reveal of the event was, of course, the new Xiaomi 17 lineup, which comes in three flavors—the standard Xiaomi 17, the 17 Pro, and the 17 Pro Max. Xiaomi isn’t shy about its ambition here: these phones are designed to go toe-to-toe with the iPhone.
All three models pack Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, built on a cutting-edge 3nm process. Xiaomi claims the chip’s CPU performance is right up there with Apple’s A19 Pro.
The Pro versions also bring something new: Xiaomi Share Back Screen, a mini-display tucked into the rear camera module. It’s designed for personal touches and quick interactions without flipping the phone around.
The Long Road to the XRING Chip
Lei Jun didn’t shy away from talking about failures either. Xiaomi’s first in-house processor, the Surge S1 back in 2017, never really took off. That setback forced the company to pause and regroup, focusing on building expertise before taking another swing.
In 2021, Xiaomi rebooted its chip program with the XRING project. Four years later, in May 2025, the first model—XRING O1—was born, built on the same 3nm process as today’s top chips. It already powers devices like the Xiaomi 15S Pro, and now it’s at the heart of Xiaomi’s future strategy.
