Xiaomi's four-month rolling layoffs — phones, cars, internet, international, all four lines cutting 20% of payroll while HQ calls it "routine"
TL;DR
Caixin: Xiaomi has been running rolling layoffs across phones, cars, internet and international divisions since March 2026 — a 20% payroll cut per department, alongside a 43% Q1 profit drop and 40M-unit phone target cut.
Caixin broke on July 10 that Xiaomi has been running staged layoffs since March 2026 — departments began negotiations in April, mass exits in June — and the process is still ongoing. The cuts span smartphones, autos, internet, and international divisions, hitting R&D, QA, product, and marketing roles. Severance is N+1 — years-of-service months plus one.
Departments aren't cutting headcount — they're cutting 20% of the payroll line. A division sheds one-fifth of its salary spend however it wants; taking out one senior costs the same as three juniors. That accounting trick is what lets HQ keep saying "no mass layoffs."
Xiaomi's line to Caixin: "routine business-team adjustments, no so-called mass layoffs." The financial facts landing at the same time: Q1 net profit -43% year over year; 2026 phone shipment target cut from 135M to 95M units (40M gone, memory-chip shortage as AI data centers absorb DRAM supply); Q1 auto division operating loss of 3.1B yuan. The four-division cuts are landing in the same window as those numbers.
Autos are a different story. June alone shipped 30,000+ units, first-half cumulative 185,055, full-year target 550,000 — that line is still expanding. What's being cut on the auto side are back-office R&D-adjacent teams; front-line delivery engineers and the Sky Nomad extended-range SUV team are untouched. Consistent with Lei Jun's "everything makes way for SU7 / YU7" internal signaling over the past six months.
Former Xiaomi exec Wang Teng warned back in March: "The phone industry is heading into a wave of layoffs this year." Six months later that quote reads like a timeline for his old employer. Vivo and Oppo are also cutting 2026 targets — this isn't Xiaomi's problem, it's industry-wide capacity realignment.
Win the bet, and Q3 profit prints positive, autos cross into break-even by year-end, and Sky Nomad's launch pivots the growth story from phones to cars + AI robotics. Lose it, and the memory shortage stretches into 2027, phones keep bleeding heads, and 2026 net closes red before autos can finish the handoff.
via Caixin / Sina Finance / 21 Jingji / Ad Hoc News
Departments aren't cutting headcount — they're cutting 20% of the payroll line. A division sheds one-fifth of its salary spend however it wants; taking out one senior costs the same as three juniors. That accounting trick is what lets HQ keep saying "no mass layoffs."
Xiaomi's line to Caixin: "routine business-team adjustments, no so-called mass layoffs." The financial facts landing at the same time: Q1 net profit -43% year over year; 2026 phone shipment target cut from 135M to 95M units (40M gone, memory-chip shortage as AI data centers absorb DRAM supply); Q1 auto division operating loss of 3.1B yuan. The four-division cuts are landing in the same window as those numbers.
Autos are a different story. June alone shipped 30,000+ units, first-half cumulative 185,055, full-year target 550,000 — that line is still expanding. What's being cut on the auto side are back-office R&D-adjacent teams; front-line delivery engineers and the Sky Nomad extended-range SUV team are untouched. Consistent with Lei Jun's "everything makes way for SU7 / YU7" internal signaling over the past six months.
Former Xiaomi exec Wang Teng warned back in March: "The phone industry is heading into a wave of layoffs this year." Six months later that quote reads like a timeline for his old employer. Vivo and Oppo are also cutting 2026 targets — this isn't Xiaomi's problem, it's industry-wide capacity realignment.
Win the bet, and Q3 profit prints positive, autos cross into break-even by year-end, and Sky Nomad's launch pivots the growth story from phones to cars + AI robotics. Lose it, and the memory shortage stretches into 2027, phones keep bleeding heads, and 2026 net closes red before autos can finish the handoff.
via Caixin / Sina Finance / 21 Jingji / Ad Hoc News
