Xiaomi co-founder Lei Jun reportedly outlined plans to invest CNY50 billion ($6.9 billion) over ten-years on its mobile processor ambitions, as it looks set to unveil its first home-grown chip this week.

Bloomberg reported Lei had made the revelation on Chinese social media platform Weibo, stating that “chips are a peak we need to climb and a hard battle we cannot escape if we want to become a hard tech company”.

The heightened push towards mobile chips comes as Lei confirmed it will unveil its first home-made processor, Xring O1, on 22 May, following speculation.

It first decided to embark on the Xring mobile chip project in 2021, and has since spent more than CNY13.5 billion on development, along with a planned CNY6 billion spend on research and development in 2025, said Lei. He also said the company now employs 2,500 people in its semiconductor team.

Reuters reported last week the new Xring 01 chip has been manufactured by TSMC using its 3-nanometre node, and has been developed by Xiaomi’s internal chip design unit and uses Arm’s architecture.

Interestingly, Bloomberg pointed out Xiaomi could even have the edge over Huawei in the mobile chip space, as the latter vendor is unable to secure semiconductors more advanced than 7-nanometres due to restrictions placed on its production partner SMIC.