He is the founder of the empire of smartphones Xiaomi, which has spread to many other fields, and now also to the electric car. Lei Jun (Xiantao, Hubei, China, 1969) was inspired by Steve Jobs and Apple to create his company, but now he follows his own path; In fact, the firm led by Tim Cook has already abandoned its battery car project.
Xiaomi is the third largest mobile phone seller in the world, with a share of 12%, and is only surpassed by Samsung and Apple. On the 12th it announced that it will deliver its first electric car, the SU7 sedan, on the 28th. Since then, the stock has risen 10% on the stock market. Three years ago, Lei unveiled an investment plan in this area of $10 billion over a decade. She has partnered with state-backed Chinese vehicle maker BAIC, which has also worked with BMW in the Asian country, and has created a specialized team of 4,400 engineers and experts.
Lei and his wife, Zhang Tong, have two daughters, although the company does not provide information about their private lives. Forbes estimates the businessman's fortune at 12.4 billion dollars (11.4 billion euros). He was born in the countryside, in Xiantao, Hubei province, whose capital is Wuhan. His parents were teachers, a profession discredited after the Cultural Revolution. As a child he was interested in electronics and liked to disassemble and reassemble radios, which his father encouraged him to do. His neighbors called him “the smart boy.” He made the first electric lamp in his town with two batteries, a light bulb, a wooden box he made himself and some cables.
His parents were busy and didn't have time to spend with him, who took care of himself, and still got good grades.
He graduated in Computer Science from Wuhan University. At that time, she read Fire in the valleythe book by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine about the birth of the computer industry, and, fascinated by Steve Jobs, he decided to “found a company that would be first class,” he told the New York Times. During his last year of university he created his first company, Gundugoms.
In 1992, a year after graduating, he joined Kingsoft (which produces the WPS office suite, for example) as an engineer. Thanks to his talent for that and for marketing, he became president and CEO in 1998 and took it public in Hong Kong in 2007. Meanwhile, he had launched Joyo.com, an online bookstore that Amazon bought for $75 million in 2004. In 2005 he made an investment of one million in the YY video social network; His shares were worth 129 million when the firm went public on the Nasdaq in 2012. He resigned from Kingsoft after the IPO for “health reasons.” In 2008 he became president of UCWeb, mobile internet, another of his investments.
In 2010 he founded Xiaomi in Beijing, with six partners he had not previously met, including former Google executive Lin Bin. They began by adapting a system based on Android and contracting with Apple suppliers, such as Qualcomm and Broadcom. A year later they launched their first smartphone and in 2014 they were already the first in mobile sales in China.
At first, Xiaomi saved costs by selling only on its website, and offered its models at half the price of its rivals. In 2015 it was already developing a wide range of consumer electronics. It makes household appliances, from cleaning robots to televisions, drones or air purifiers, all of them connected to the internet of things. One of its strategies to reduce costs is to keep its phones on the market longer than its competitors. It has also created a community of “fans” (that's what they call them) who co-design and promote the products.
The company went public in 2018 at HK$21 per share; It fell to $8 in its first year of trading, and the pandemic caused it to skyrocket to $33. Since then it has fallen below $15 Hong Kong.
In 2011, Lei co-founded Shunwei Capital, an investment company through which he invests in e-commerce, social media and mobile companies. Also that year he rejoined Kingsoft as president.
Lei has good relations with Beijing. In 2021, the United States included Xiaomi in the list of companies that support the Chinese military. And Lei and another dozen directors of the firm are considered by Ukraine to be patrons of the Russian invasion.
Xiaomi enters the electric vehicle at a somewhat weak time for sales and with a powerful price war in China. The advantage for the technology company is its software: last October it launched a new operating system that connects all its devices. The SU7 can connect to more than a thousand Xiaomi devices, but also to the iPhone, for example.
As Reuters analyst Katrina Hamlin points out, for many high-net-worth drivers, internet connectivity is as important as fuel and maintenance costs. In addition, Xiaomi has cash (in June it had 900 million dollars in cash) to face the investment required by the sector. The “smart boy” wants to show that a car is not so different from a mobile phone.
Philanthropy
He has made donations to his Alma mater, Wuhan University; Zhuhai Charity, an organization that funds schools for immigrants; to the villagers of Yangchun, for the renovation of schools and mud houses and the construction of cultural buildings, and to the victims of the 2013 Lushan earthquake.
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