Lei Jun, whose wealth has shrunk by nearly 50%, “sold his house” to Xiaomi employees

Produced by Radar Finance Written by Zhou Hui Edited by Meng Shuai

According to the latest “2026 Hurun Rich List”, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun ranks 17th on the list. Although his wealth has shrunk by 48% from last year, his net worth is still as high as 169 billion yuan.

Now, the billionaire is building a real “Mi Family” for his employees. On October 24, Chen Bo, general manager of Xiaomi Ecological Chain, posted a video on Weibo saying that Xiaomi’s Wuhan Optics Valley Mengxiangjia project will be officially launched the next day.

As Xiaomi Group’s first residential community sold to employees, the Optics Valley Mengxiangjia project consists of three 18-story small high-rise buildings and one 33-story high-rise building, covering multiple unit types ranging from 110 square meters to 143 square meters.

Judging from the filing information, the overall average registered price of the project is about 13,885 yuan/square meter, which is about 1,200 yuan to 2,400 yuan lower than the surrounding new houses. The difference compared with some new houses can be thousands of yuan.

It is worth mentioning that this project is not Xiaomi’s first move to provide housing benefits to employees. Previously, Xiaomi has built a total of 12 employee apartments in Beijing, Nanjing and Wuhan, providing more than 4,200 apartments.

From thousand-yuan apartments to million-dollar homes, the reason behind Xiaomi’s continuous increase in employee housing benefits may be related to the increasingly fierce competition for talent. Nowadays, the “talent grabbing” war among major technology companies has penetrated into the housing field.

However, Xiaomi is currently facing certain performance pressure. Xiaomi’s latest financial report shows that in the first half of this year, the company achieved revenue of 208.063 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 8.44%; it recorded a net profit attributable to the parent company of 14.186 billion yuan, a decrease of 37.86% from the same period last year.

Among them, in the second quarter of this year, Xiaomi’s two trump cards, namely smartphones, smart electric vehicles and AI and other innovative businesses, faced the dilemma of declining shipments and expanding operating losses.

Xiaomi sells houses to employees, and the real “Mi Family” lands in Wuhan Optics Valley

On October 24, Chen Bo, general manager of Xiaomi Ecological Chain, posted a video on Weibo, announcing that Xiaomi’s Wuhan Optics Valley Mengxiangjia project would officially open the next day.

Radar Finance noted that this is not only Xiaomi’s first employee housing project in Wuhan, but also Xiaomi Group’s first residential community sold to employees.

Chen Bo introduced in the video that the Optics Valley Mengxiangjia project consists of three 18-story small high-rise buildings and one 33-story high-rise building, with a total of 297 units, covering small units with three bedrooms and two bathrooms of 110 square meters, medium units of 122 to 125 square meters, and large units of 143 square meters with a 16-square-meter sky garden.

It is reported that the entire project is designed in accordance with the fourth-generation residential standards, with a floor area ratio of 2.0, equipped with sky gardens and wind and rain corridors. The community is equipped with gyms, yoga rooms, healing spaces, billiards rooms, reception rooms and other leisure places.

In terms of location, the project is not far from Xiaomi Wuhan Science and Technology Park, and is close to the Optics Valley Central Ecological Corridor Baozi Creek Park, Wuhan Children’s Hospital Optics Valley Campus and other supporting living facilities. At the same time, the project will also be equipped with community businesses, and will be targeted for investment and unified operations based on the needs of Xiaomi employees.

It is worth mentioning that according to filing information, Wufangtong, and Shell House Search, the overall registered average price of the Optics Valley Mengxiangjia project is 13,885 yuan/square meter, which is about 1,200 yuan to 2,400 yuan/square meter lower than surrounding new houses, and the gap compared with some new houses can be thousands of yuan.

Among them, Building 1 is the main three-bedroom building with 33 floors. The average registered price is about 13,609 yuan/square meter, and the total price is about 1.388 million yuan to 1.8 million yuan.

As for Buildings 2, 3, and 4, which are small high-rise products, the average registered price ranges from 13,884 yuan/square meter to 13,892 yuan/square meter, and the total housing price is approximately 1.83 million yuan to 2.13 million yuan.

According to the Daily Economic News, the Wuhan Optics Valley Mengxiangjia project is Wuhan P (2021) 073 plot purchased by Mi Space Wuhan Information Technology Co., Ltd., an affiliated company of Xiaomi Group, in June 2021 at a reserve price of 303 million yuan. At that time, the transaction floor price was 8,326.92 yuan/square meter.

The transfer documents show that bidders must promise that if they win the land, they will introduce an Internet headquarters or regional headquarters with mobile phones, smart hardware and IoT (Internet of Things) platforms as the core, and the total project investment will be no less than 8 billion yuan.

At the same time, the houses built must be sold to regular employees of the Xiaomi Group (employees who have signed labor contracts with various companies under the Xiaomi Group and have social security contributions paid by these companies). The Wuhan Optics Valley Central City Construction Service Center designated by the East Lake New Technology Development Zone Management Committee is responsible for supervising the implementation.

Therefore, the Wuhan Optics Valley Mengxiangjia project is only available for purchase by Xiaomi employees. According to market sources, the internal price of Xiaomi employees in this project is expected to be around 12,000 yuan/square meter.

From thousand-yuan apartments to million-dollar homes, Lei Jun builds the “Anju Network” to compete for talents

In fact, in terms of employee housing benefits, Xiaomi not only built the Optics Valley Mengxiangjia project, but also laid out youth apartments in many places.

In July this year, Xiaomi Wuhan Science and Technology Park Youth Apartment was officially opened for occupancy. It is reported that the apartment is operated by Vanke’s long-term rental apartment brand Boyu. It has 3 buildings with a total construction area of ​​50,000 square meters, covering 960 main units of 26 square meters and 30 units of 30 square meters.

All rooms can accommodate up to two people and are equipped with private bathrooms. In-room air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, water heaters, smart door locks and other home appliances and furniture are all Xiaomi and ecological chain products.

On the first floor of the apartment, Xiaomi has also planned convenient commercial facilities such as a 24-hour convenience store, barber shop, and SF Express station; the public area has shared facilities such as a shared kitchen, billiards room, small gym, reading area, board game area, and audio-visual room, which are open to residents free of charge.

In terms of price, according to Hubei Daily, the average monthly rent of Xiaomi Youth Apartment in Wuhan is 1,099 yuan, with the lowest being only 949 yuan, including central heating and Internet. In the same area, the monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment is about 1,600 yuan.

According to public information, Xiaomi’s layout in Youth Apartments can be traced back to 2021. In August of that year, Xiaomi officially established Mi Apartment (Beijing) Commercial Operation Management Co., Ltd.

At that time, Wang Hua, then general manager of the public relations department of Xiaomi Group, said that Xiaomi employee apartments were mainly designed to relieve employees, especially fresh graduates, from the pressure of difficulty, distance and expensive renting. It was a measure to enhance employee happiness.

Tianyancha information shows that the company is wholly owned by Xiaomi Communication Technology Co., Ltd. and has been renamed Mi Xingchen (Beijing) Housing Leasing Co., Ltd.

In July last year, Xiaomi took the lead in launching youth apartments in Beijing and Nanjing simultaneously, with a rent standard of 1,999 yuan per month. The Wuhan Youth Apartment that is open for occupancy this time is the third youth apartment it has launched nationwide, and it is also the largest one.

According to Xiaomi founder, chairman and CEO Lei Jun, Xiaomi has built a total of 12 employee apartments with more than 4,200 units.

Some people believe that behind Xiaomi’s series of housing benefits, from providing employees with youth apartments with a monthly rent of 1,000 yuan to building multi-million-dollar community housing, it is essentially a competitive layout for core talents.

Xiaomi’s semi-annual report shows that as of June 30 this year, Xiaomi had a total of approximately 52,900 full-time employees, an increase of 3,855 from the same period last year. Among them, R&D personnel increased by 10.25% year-on-year to approximately 25,000.

Wuhan Optics Valley is Xiaomi’s “second headquarters”. Since Xiaomi settled in 2017, the number of Xiaomi employees there has continued to rise.

According to the official WeChat ID of “China Optics Valley”, Xiaomi currently has about 8,000 employees in Han, of which more than 60% are R&D personnel. It is building a R&D center with a capacity of 10,000 people.

At present, Wuhan has become Xiaomi’s largest R&D and intelligent manufacturing base outside of its Beijing headquarters, and is also an important implementation hub for its “Full Ecosystem for People, Cars, and Homes” strategy.

“China City News” pointed out that the current “robbing of people” by big technology companies has penetrated deeply into the housing field. Among them, JD.com has made early arrangements and invested heavily in employee housing. In Beijing alone, it has spent 7 billion to build nearly 5,000 comfortable apartments for young talents that can be moved in with all the necessary facilities.

Another major Internet company, Tencent, has also planned more than 4,000 well-decorated talent apartments in “Penguin Island”, focusing on “small but refined” apartments of 20 to 35 square meters, with rents only 60% of those in surrounding apartments of the same type.

Revenue and net profit both fell in the first half of the year, and the two major businesses faced challenges

As employee housing benefits continue to increase, Xiaomi is facing certain performance pressure.

In August this year, Xiaomi handed over an interim report of “double profit decline”: During the reporting period, the company achieved revenue of 208.063 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 8.44%; it recorded a net profit attributable to the parent company of 14.186 billion yuan, a decrease of 37.86% from the same period last year.

According to Xiaomi’s financial report, its revenue is mainly composed of innovative businesses such as mobile phones × AIoT, smart electric vehicles and AI. But now, these two performance “carriages” are facing considerable challenges.

In the second quarter of this year, Xiaomi’s mobile phone × AIoT division achieved revenue of 84 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 11.3%. Among them, the smartphone business contributed revenue of 42.1 billion yuan, a decrease of 7.5% from 45.5 billion yuan in the same period last year.

Xiaomi said that the decrease in revenue was mainly due to a decline in smartphone shipments, but was partially offset by an increase in smartphone ASP.

According to Omdia data, although Xiaomi’s smartphone shipments have ranked among the top three in the world for 24 consecutive quarters, the downward trend is obvious.

In the second quarter of 2026, Xiaomi’s smartphone shipments fell 26.5% year-on-year to 31.2 million units, mainly due to product matrix optimization, reduced shipments of mid-to-low-end smartphones, and weak global demand caused by continued increases in core component prices.

In addition, due to factors such as rising prices of core components, the gross profit margin of Xiaomi’s smartphone business dropped from 11.5% in the second quarter of 2025 to 8.5% in the second quarter of 2026.

During the same period, revenue from IoT and consumer products under Xiaomi’s mobile phone

In the automotive business, in the second quarter of this year, Xiaomi delivered a total of 104,200 new cars, a year-on-year increase of 28.2%, mainly due to the increase in Xiaomi YU7 series delivery, but partially offset by the decrease in Xiaomi SU7 Ultra delivery.

On September 7, Lei Jun revealed that Xiaomi’s cumulative delivery volume has exceeded 800,000 vehicles. In the same month, Xiaomi held an autumn flagship new product launch conference and officially launched four extended-range SUV models of the Pengcheng series, with more than 10,000 units delivered in the first month.

Driven by sales growth, Xiaomi’s smart electric vehicle revenue in the second quarter increased from 20.6 billion yuan in the second quarter of 2025 to 23.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of approximately 15.9%.

However, the profitability is not optimistic. In the second quarter of this year, the gross profit margin of Xiaomi’s innovative business segments such as smart electric vehicles and AI was 19.2%, a year-on-year decrease of 7.2 percentage points. This was mainly due to the decrease in the delivery volume of Xiaomi SU7 Ultra, the increase in the price of core components and the increase in costs related to the AI ​​business.

According to Xiaomi, in the second quarter of this year, its innovative business segments such as smart electric vehicles and AI recorded an operating loss of 2.6 billion yuan, while the operating loss of this segment in the same period last year was 300 million yuan, and the scale of losses expanded by more than 7 times year-on-year.

While the two major innovative business segments of mobile phones, smart electric vehicles and AI are both under pressure, Xiaomi has chosen to continue to increase investment in AI.

In March this year, Lei Jun said at the China Development Forum that Xiaomi’s cumulative R&D investment in the past five years has exceeded 100 billion yuan, and it plans to exceed 200 billion yuan in the next five years.

According to the plan, Xiaomi plans to invest more than 60 billion yuan in the AI ​​field in the next three years. This year’s R&D and capital investment in the AI ​​field will exceed 16 billion yuan.

The competition in AI will eventually come down to the competition for talent. Luo Fuli, who is now responsible for the large model of Xiaomi MiMo, is a technical expert who was “poached” by Lei Jun with a lot of money.

Public information shows that Luo Fuli has worked for Alibaba Damo Academy and DeepSeek, and is known as an “AI talented woman” by the outside world.

According to LatePost, on September 22, Luo Fuli was successfully promoted to level 22, the highest level in Xiaomi’s ranking system.