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On Aug. 25, Xiaomi Group announced that it had entered into a share purchase agreement with relevant contractors of Deepmotion, a self-driving technology company, for a total transaction value of about $77.37 million. Of this amount, US $24.4 million will be repaid in cash and the rest will be paid by issuing consideration shares. Upon completion of the transaction, Shen Shen Technology will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Xiaomi. According to the announcement, Xiaomi Group acquired 28.84% of SDK's preferred shares for $14.9 million in cash and 71.16% of SDK's common shares at a consideration of US $62.47 million, which was repaid in cash and shares. Upon completion of the transaction, Shen Shen Technology will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Xiaomi.

It is understood that Deep Motion Technology is an autopilot technology company that focuses on providing algorithms for the perception, positioning, planning and control of advanced driving assistance systems, as well as a full range of software solutions for autopilot applications. According to the relevant information: Shenzhen Technology was established in 2017, the legal representative Li Zhiwei, registered capital of 10 million US dollars, business scope includes technology development, technology promotion, technology transfer, technology consulting, etc., the company is located in Beijing, the size of the company is 30-50 people. Wang Xiang, president of Xiaomi Group, responded to Xiaomi's acquisition of deep motion technology, saying that self-driving technology is the most important technology for intelligent electric vehicles, while deep motion technology has strong research and development capabilities, technology accumulation and landing experience in the field of self-driving. Xiaomi is very optimistic about the technology research and development capability of the deep motion technology team, and hopes to accelerate Xiaomi's research and development in self-driving technology through acquisition.

On March 30, 2021, Xiaomi Group announced that Xiaomi had officially entered the smart electric vehicle industry and planned to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to take charge of the smart electric vehicle business. The initial investment is 10 billion yuan, with an estimated investment of US $10 billion over the next 10 years. Lei Jun, chairman, will also serve as chief executive of the smart electric vehicle business. Lei Jun said at the press conference that this will be the last major entrepreneurial project in his life and is willing to bet on all his reputation. In addition, Lei Jun said that he and the company have been involved in the automobile field for a long time, and have accumulated a lot of related things. For example, there are hundreds of vehicle-related patents owned by affiliated companies, and many departments are linked with cars. I am very optimistic about the electric vehicle industry. The pricing range of Xiaomi's first product will be between 10 and 300000, positioning it as a mid-to-high-end model. The car released by Xiaomi will certainly represent the cutting-edge technology and cutting-edge level, because the mobile phone technology and automotive technology are the same, Xiaomi will live up to everyone's expectations. After officially announcing his entry into the automobile industry, Lei Jun also visited various places and frequently went in and out of various mainframe factories. On June 8, Lei Jun made a low-key visit to the Great Wall Automobile Research and Development Center in Baoding. Although neither side disclosed the purpose of the trip, the industry believed it had something to do with Xiaomi's contract manufacturing.

Since June, Xiaomi's official website has been recruiting people related to the automobile industry. From the published pictures, the recruitment positions include data platform, vehicle infrastructure, decision planning, millimeter wave algorithm, development tools, front-end platform development, embedded software, control, perception, high-precision map, simulation platform and so on. In addition, the recruitment information shows that the above work addresses are in Haidian, Beijing and Xuhui District, Shanghai. It is worth noting that since Xiaomi announced the construction of the car, the location of the headquarters and factory has attracted a lot of attention. On July 28th, Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi Group, announced through Weibo that Xiaomi launched the recruitment of self-driving department, recruiting the first batch of 500 self-driving technicians to work in Haidian District. On August 18, the Automotive Business Review reported that Xiaomi Automobile headquarters and its first factory were basically settled in Beijing. Xiaomi officials did not give an accurate response to the news.

It is not difficult to see that Xiaomi has been visiting car companies to seek cooperation while starting to recruit self-driving talents after it announced that it is building cars, which also fully demonstrates its sense of urgency to build cars. Although Xiaomi Group has certain advantages in the mobile phone market and has sufficient funds, it is obviously not realistic for Xiaomi to fully master a mature production line, because it not only requires a huge amount of money, but also takes a lot of time to precipitate. For now, as a cross-border player, buying a self-driving company seems to be a shortcut to achieve the landing of a project or product in a short period of time. But it's still a big challenge if you really want to survive in car-building.

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