Xiaomi Opens Its AI Training Books as Budget Phones and a September Flagship Loom

Xiaomi opened a live dashboard for its MiMo-V2.6 AI training run, costing up to USD 31,000 an hour, as shares rose 1.8% to EUR 2.93.

Xiaomi is letting the public watch its artificial intelligence models learn — and pay for the privilege in real time. On Thursday the Beijing group began streaming the overnight training run of its new MiMo-V2.6 Pro and Flash systems through a live dashboard, exposing not just token consumption and evaluation curves but the minute-by-minute bill.

The unusual display of transparency came as the company's shares added 1.8 percent to close at EUR 2.93. That gain stands out against a bruising stretch for the stock, which has shed 33 percent since the start of the year. A day earlier, the equity had slipped 1.5 percent to finish at EUR 2.90.

Reinforcement learning at USD 31,000 an hour

The models are being trained through reinforcement learning, a method that devours capital. Luo Fuli, who heads the team, put the running cost at as much as USD 31,000 per hour. After shipping the predecessor MiMo-2.5 in April, her group spent nearly half a year probing the scaling limits of that approach, she said. Scaling now proceeds along three axes: computing resources, the range of tasks and training environments, and reward evaluation. Further details on the models are to be released as open source in the coming weeks.

Software aimed squarely at hardware

For Xiaomi the work is not confined to the laboratory. The AI is intended to slot directly into the company's device ecosystem, and the timing is deliberate: late September brings the official Chinese launch of the Xiaomi 18 Pro smartphone series. That lineup features a secondary display on the rear, on which users can build their own mini-applications with the help of artificial intelligence. Industry reports indicate the series runs on Qualcomm's next-generation Snapdragon processor.

The spending behind all this is already substantial. Research and development outlays reached RMB 9.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, and management is targeting a full-year 2026 R&D budget of more than RMB 40 billion. Heavy investment in AI, the core handset business and newer growth fields such as electric mobility continues to define the strategy of the Beijing group.

A battery offensive for the volume tier

While the flagship line takes shape, Xiaomi is pressing its hardware strategy across the mass market. Yesterday the company unveiled the Redmi Note 17 series for European markets and Southeast Asia, leaning heavily on silicon-carbon battery technology. At a presentation in Budapest it showed several variants, led by the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max 5G with a capacity of 9,210 milliampere-hours. The sibling Redmi Note 17 Pro 5G, aimed at European buyers, carries an 8,340 mAh cell. A promise of six years of security updates accompanies the range, a direct challenge to established rivals.

The volume segment remains the group's fundamental backbone. In Europe's smartphone market, Xiaomi holds third place.

Whether the battery push and the coming flagships deliver the hoped-for lift depends above all on global consumer demand — a question the share price, so far, has answered with restraint.