1000+ Xiaomi Employees Reportedly Working on Proprietary “Xring” Chipset Designs

Mid-way through April, a few Asian media outlets proposed a fairly recent formation of Xiaomi’s “chip platform department”—most likely operating as part of the Chinese corporation’s mobile phone development operation. Industry insiders claimed that this special branch was tasked with the designing of “Xuanjie” chipsets, with added expertise provided by an ex-Qualcomm marketing director. Weeks later, Jukanlosreve has weighed in with alleged new details. The keen tracker—of unannounced flagship smartphone chips and semiconductor business revelations—believes that previous leaks were of merit, but made some corrections.

Given reported greater than expected “new division” headcounts, Xiaomi probably established its “Xring SoC” team a while ago—on this topic, Jukanlosreve divulged: “it operates as a new company; independent of the original parent firm. It’s not a small team either—it has over 1000 people. To be honest, I see it as a positive development if a domestically produced chip gets used in a domestically made smartphone and sold globally. I genuinely hope it becomes reality. If Xring succeeds, it might encourage more companies to get involved, and even engineers currently working at major firms could see better pay opportunities.”

It is unclear whether a previously reported “problematic” in-house chip design was started under “Xring” supervision, but Xiaomi seems to be prioritizing the formulation of new proprietary products—older attempts were not well received (back in 2017). Jukanlosreve has seemingly boasted about his insider credentials: “let me share something I know; I actually saw a prototype around the end of March (2025). The system was basically identical to the final version—the only difference was that you needed to log in with an engineer’s internal ID to access the detailed descriptions…The industry hasn’t been doing great over the past few years. As I always say, ‘cost cutting and efficiency’ have become widespread across nearly every sector. So seeing more capital flow into this area is a good sign. The fact that Xring is willing to spend money is definitely a positive signal for the growth of the ecosystem.” Xiaomi’s fairly young and mysterious off-shoot could be a crafty way of flying under the radar; i.e. not attract too much international scrutiny. Industry watchdogs are still befuddled by the (parent) company having unrestricted access to reasonably modern TSMC manufacturing nodes.