Chinese smart device and software developer Xiaomi today announced it had received US$1.1 billion in a new round of funding, at a US$45 billion valuation. Participating investors include All-star Investment, DST, GIC, Hopu Fund and Yunfeng Capital (the VC fund co-founded by Alibaba chairman Jack Ma).
The valuation makes Xiaomi the fourth largest tech company in China, after Alibaba Group, Tencent and Baidu.
The company had raised four rounds of funding previously, according to the company and media reports. Morningside Ventures led the first three rounds.
1. In July 2011 Xiaomi finalised US$41 million Series A funding at US$250 million valuation, led by Morningside Ventures and joined by Qiming Ventures, IDG Capital Partners and Xiaomi’s founding team (56 members contributing a total of US$11 million).
2. In December 2011 the company announced US$90 million funding at a US$1 billion valuation, led by Morningside Ventures with participation by Temasek, Qualcomm Ventures, Shunwei (the VC fund co-founded by Lei Jun, Xiaomi’s CEO and co-founder) and other existing investors, IDG Capital Partners and Qiming Ventures.
3. In June 2012 Xiaomi announced US$216 million financing led by Morningside Ventures, at a valuation of US$4 billion.
4. It was reported in September 2013 that DST injected an undisclosed amount of funding, valuing Xiaomi at US$10 billion (via Tencent Tech Channel).
The company today said that a new flagship product will be launched in the next month, during January 2015. Xiaomi reported that it is developing a custom operating system based on Firefox OS. All the smart devices the company has thus far launched use MIUI, a customized Android system.
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