Apparently the cellphone-making business is a good one to be in right now, as Xiaomi has just raised a huge new funding round.
The Chinese smartphone maker is now $1 billion richer, according to a report out from the Wall Street Journal this weekend.
The round is being led by All-Stars Investment, with Russian investment firm DST Global and Singapore sovereign-wealth fund GIC, which are both already investors in the company, as well as Yun feng Capital and Alibaba’s Jack Ma also participating. The round is expected to officially close on Monday.
Xiaomi has already raised at least $347 million, last raising an undisclosed amount of funding, at a $10 billion valuation, in August of 2013. With this latest round, the company is now reportedly valued at a whopping $45 billion, growing by more than four times in just the last year and change. That also makes it more valuable than Uber, which just raised$1.2 billion to be valued at $40 billion.
Founded in 2010 by serial entrepreneur Lei Jun, Xiaomi is currently the top-selling smartphone vendor in China, which accounted for 37% of global shipments, roughly 108.5 million units, in the second quarter of this year, according to research firm Canalys. During that quarter, Xiaomi had a 14% share in China, growing 240% year-to-year, becoming larger than Samsung for the first time. In just a short time, it has gone from marginal player to main player in a very important market…….
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Image source: mi.com