【Two Sessions 2026】Lei Jun of Xiaomi: AI boom boosts memory chips, strives to buffer the impact on smartphones; some places will have truly autonomous driving within 5 years

AI storage chip demand surges, affecting smartphone memory chip supply. During the 2026 National People’s Congress, Xiaomi Group Chairman and CEO Lei Jun stated that they are making every effort to reduce the impact of chip price increases on consumers.

Lei Jun said that due to the explosive growth in AI demand, memory storage chips are severely in short supply. Over the past year, memory chip prices have skyrocketed, putting significant pressure on Xiaomi phones and related businesses. “I think we will try various methods to minimize the difficulty for consumers to accept this.”

Xiaomi plans to invest 200 billion RMB over the next five years

In a written interview with domestic media, Lei Jun said that over the next five years, Xiaomi plans to invest 200 billion RMB, focusing on core technologies such as chips, AI, and operating systems. He believes that possessing complete intelligent technology and strong intelligent manufacturing capabilities are essential foundations for the new era of the automotive industry.

Lei Jun also revealed that Xiaomi’s new generation SU7 car will be released soon. Currently, they are fully preparing for it. In February, Xiaomi almost only delivered the YU7 model, and the factory is accelerating the early production of the new generation SU7.

Some limited areas can achieve true autonomous driving

Lei Jun believes that in the next five years, vehicles as intelligent connected cars will further improve their driving intent and environmental perception capabilities. In the next five years, some limited areas will be able to achieve true autonomous driving. However, for ordinary private cars to operate in open roads with full scenarios—“hands off” (i.e., hands off the steering wheel)—more time is still needed.

For the entire industry, intelligent driving still has a large space for technological evolution, and the difficulty of continuous improvement remains significant. This relies on the joint efforts of the entire industry chain, including intelligent driving chips, algorithms, cabins, chassis, and other technologies.

Lei Jun said that one of the suggestions this year is to upgrade the driver’s license training and assessment system to help build a traffic civilization system for the era of smart cars.

More robots entering factories to “work”

In the robotics industry, Lei Jun said that the industry has developed very rapidly in the past two years. The most critical step is solving the problems of large-scale application, including cost and stability, to truly turn robots into productivity. Promoting the large-scale application of humanoid general-purpose robots in intelligent manufacturing is of great significance.

Recently, Xiaomi announced that robots have started “internship” in factories. Lei Jun said that robots may still look a bit “clumsy” now, but they have taken a very meaningful step. With successive iterations of general-purpose base models and the development of multimodal perception and reinforcement learning technologies, more and more robots will enter factories to “work.”