Xiaomi launches AI model to challenge OpenAI and Anthropic, lead researcher calls it ‘a quiet ambush’

Xiaomi has made an entry into the frontier AI race with the launch of MiMo-V2-Pro — a one-trillion parameter foundation model whose performance benchmarks are said to be approaching those of OpenAI and Anthropic but at roughly one-sixth to one-seventh of the cost when accessed through its API. The project was led by Fuli Luo, who previously worked on DeepSeek R1 project — the Chinese AI model that shook the industry and cost Nvidia billions of dollars in market cap in a day. That model delivered frontier-level performance at relatively lower costs.

Luo did not mince words about what Xiaomi was attempting with this release, describing it in a post on X as “a quiet ambush” on the global AI frontier.