A Xiaomi electric vehicle is displayed in a Xiaomi Smart Home store in Shanghai, China (Costfoto/Getty Images)

On the shoulders of giants

Xiaomi is speedrunning building an electric vehicle business

Apple decided pivoting from phones to EVs was too hard. Xiaomi is finding it a piece of cake.

8/20/25 7:51AM

Going first is hard, and scary. You have to forge a path, fixing problems no one else has ever faced, without the ability to ask anyone for help. There’s a reason Google wasn’t the very first search engine and Facebook wasn’t the OG social media platform. It’s almost always easier to build on existing work — and no company is proving that better than Chinese tech giant Xiaomi with its new electric vehicle business.

Su got a fast car

In 2021, no one at Xiaomi knew how to make cars. Indeed, going from smartphones to EVs isn’t exactly a logical or easy next step — just ask Apple, which finally gave up on its moon shot car project after a decade.

But facing a fresh round of US trade sanctions in 2021, execs at Xiaomi ran a scary thought experiment — what would happen to the company if the sanctions killed off its phone business? Xiaomi Auto was founded in September of that year, and now, less than four years on, the company thinks it can deliver 350,000 electric vehicles like its SU7 this fiscal year. That’s a milestone that took Tesla more than a decade, and domestic rival BYD even longer.

Phone down, car up

As yesterday’s earnings report revealed, cars are speeding up to become Xiaomi’s future, as the company — which has a ~15% share of the smartphone market — noted that the global smartphone industry itself is likely to experience near to zero collective growth this year, while intense price wars continue to chip away at profitability.

Meanwhile, Xiaomi’s smart EVs, AI, and new initiatives segment reached some $3 billion (RMB 21.3 billion) in revenue — finding a swath of middle- to high-income consumers that already love Xiaomi and aren’t swayed by rival BYD’s cheaper EV alternatives. The company is now looking to expand into Europe by 2027.

Being first is nice, but being second (or more like 50th in Xiaomi’s case) clearly doesn't prevent you from catching up quick.

Rani Molla13h

Reuters: Amazon to cut 30,000 corporate jobs

Amazon is planning on cutting as many as 30,000 corporate workers starting on Tuesday, nearly 10% of its 350,000-strong corporate workforce, to “pare expenses and compensate for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic,” Reuters reports.

Last week, The New York Times reported Amazon’s plans to automate 75% of its operations in coming years, a move that could lead to 600,000 fewer hires.

Exclusive: Amazon targets as many as 30,000 corporate job cuts, sources say

“Without Elon, Tesla could lose significant value”

Rani Molla16h

Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm sent shareholders a letter today pleading with them to approve CEO Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package — which is tied to the company’s performance over the next decade — or risk losing him.

“If we fail to foster an environment that motivates Elon to achieve great things through an equitable pay-for-performance plan, we run the risk that he gives up his executive position, and Tesla may lose his time, talent and vision, which have been essential to delivering extraordinary shareholder returns,” Denholm wrote. “Without Elon, Tesla could lose significant value.”

Many have long tied Tesla’s success to retaining its longtime CEO, even Musk himself. Musk used Tesla’s earnings call last week to plea for approving his pay package, saying that it’s the voting control more than the money that’s important.

“If we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army?” Musk said.

Millie Giles

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Apple is planning to put advertising in the Maps app by 2026

Boosting its Services division with a few extra ad dollars sounds nice — but it could drive users away.

Apple Maps, Google Maps, Uber and other Apps on iPhone screen

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Meta is expected to spend a bigger share of its revenue on capex than ever before

Capital expenditures could represent 37% of Meta’s revenue in Q3, according to analyst consensus estimates.

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After Tesla earnings, prediction markets think unsupervised FSD is less likely than ever to be rolled out this year

Tesla’s unsupervised full self-driving technology, which would autonomously ferry passengers around without a human driver having to pay attention, is supposed to help catapult the electric vehicle company’s valuation further into the stratosphere. It was also supposed to be available this year, but prediction markets participants, as well as former Tesla self-driving leaders, no longer think that will happen.

On Tesla’s earnings call this week, CEO Elon Musk said the company now had “clarity” on achieving unsupervised full self-driving — something he’s repeatedly said would be available at least in some markets this year.

The comments seemed to give Polymarket prediction markets participants some clarity. There, the market-implied probability that Tesla will release unsupervised FSD this year reached its lowest point since the event contract was opened in May.

The odds of it happening had been pretty high up until late June, when Tesla’s long-awaited robotaxi launched with a safety driver in the passenger seat. The unsupervised FSD event contract specifies the feature can have “no requirement for human intervention.”