Xiaomi becomes the most valuable tech startup after being valued at $45 billion.
After four years in the market, the China-based company manufacturing low-priced mobile phones have attracted millions of customers in China, India, Singapore and Taiwan. They plan to break into the European and U.S. markets soon.
In a Facebook post dated Dec. 29, Xiaomi President Bin Lin confirmed raising $1.1 billion in the last week of funding from investors including All-Stars Investment, DST, GIC, Hope Fund and Yunfeng Capital. One of the investors is linked to Jack Ma, the CEO and founder of Alibaba.
Yuri Milner, one of the first investors of Facebook and Alibaba, also contributed to the funding. He predicts that Xiaomi can easily reach as much as $100 billion in value. The investor also believes that the mobile phone manufacturer’s potential is the same as Facebook and Alibaba.
Milner said, “I don’t think there’s any company that has reached $1 billion in revenue as fast as Xiaomi. In every conceivable benchmark, it’s almost unprecedented in terms of its speed of growth.”
Xiamoi is posed for global expansion as they plan to open an office in Brazil, which will be its first market outside Asia.
“We will strive to continue bringing innovation to everyone, with a goal of producing high-quality, high-performance devices with great user experience. In January 2015, we will be unveiling our next flagship device,” said Lin.
Xiaomi is currently the third largest mobile phone maker in the world, just behind Apple and Samsung and edges out Lenovo. In 2013, it was only valued $10 billion, but its revenue grew by 300% now reaching $5 billion. It has already surpassed Samsung in sales in China.
The rumored devices Xiaomi will release in 2015 include a mobile device with curved edges like Samsung Edge and an air purifier meant for the Chinese market.
