Xiaomi has hired Yu Zhiao, an early employee of ByteDance's AI4S team and co-founder of silicon valley battery startup Feon Energy, to lead its new Materials Core team. The AI4Materials and Materials Core initiatives mark Xiaomi's latest bet on frontier tech after its in-house large language model push, focusing on AI-materials synergy and cutting-edge materials R&D across the company's needs.
Yu holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford and a degree from Peking University. He interned at Tesla during his Ph.D. and served as an advisor to DP Technology on AI + materials.
The AI + materials space is heating up on both sides of the Pacific. In the US, Project Prometheus — co-led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — has raised over $12 billion. In China, DeepOrigin has reportedly raised close to 1 billion RMB, and Kaiwuji secured over 1 billion RMB around the 2026 Chinese New Year at breakneck speed. Major players including Google DeepMind, Nvidia, Alibaba DAMO Academy, and ByteDance all have dedicated teams.