Xiaomi

Chinese electronics company selling smartphones, smart home devices, and wearables — now also manufacturing electric vehicles.

Background

Xiaomi was founded in 2010 in Beijing and built its following with affordable smartphones sold online. It expanded into an ecosystem model spanning air purifiers to electric scooters. In 2024 it entered the electric vehicle market with the SU7 sedan.

Parent Entity & Ownership

Xiaomi uses a dual-class share structure: Class A shares carry 10 votes each; Class B shares (public) carry 1. This gives Lei Jun approximately 61.1% of total voting power despite holding only 23% of equity. Major institutional investors include Vanguard, BlackRock, and Fidelity — all minority positions with no comparable governance rights.

Controversies

Lithuania censorship warning (2021). Lithuania's National Cyber Security Centre found certain Xiaomi phone models had built-in functionality to detect and silently censor 449 keywords — including “Free Tibet” and “Taiwan independence.” The function was disabled for EU-market devices but remained in firmware, a concrete data point on the gap between regional compliance and actual device capability.

India money laundering investigation (2022). India's Enforcement Directorate seized ₹5,551 crore (approximately €620 million) from Xiaomi India's bank accounts, alleging illegal remittances structured as royalty payments to entities outside India.

US Pentagon blacklist (2021). Xiaomi was added to the DoD's “Communist Chinese military companies” list in January 2021, then successfully challenged the designation and was removed in May 2021. The episode illustrates the degree of US government scrutiny Chinese-origin technology companies attract regardless of their stated corporate independence.