[VIDEO] The Xiaomi Comeback: From “Unicorpse” to the World’s Hottest EV

Originally published on March 11th, 2026, on Substack

A video essay on one of the wildest corporate resurrections in history.

Xiaomi is targeting 550,000 electric vehicle deliveries this year. Their EV division hit profitability just 19 months after the first car shipped. Two weeks ago at MWC Barcelona, they announced a custom chip roadmap and an AI assistant launching alongside their cars in Europe.

Eight years ago, this company was declared dead. The press called them a “unicorpse.”

I spent three years researching Xiaomi’s story. I wrote about it. I taught it in my executive classes. And after all of that, I still felt like something was missing from the page…

It’s the energy in that room when Lei Jun unveiled the SU7. The desperation of a CEO pacing an empty conference room at midnight. The sheer absurdity of a phone company selling rice cookers, then building a car that outsold Porsche. Some stories need to be told out loud.

So I tried something new. I turned this story into a full video essay. Not a slideshow, not a talking head reading from a script.

This is more like a documentary you’d watch over coffee. Twenty minutes. Original research. The whole arc from rise to near-death to one of the greatest comebacks in business.

If you’ve already read the original written piece, this is a different experience. New pacing, different structure, visual storytelling.

Think of the essay as the research paper and this as the film. 🎞️

What’s inside:

0:00 — The launch that broke the internet: 50,000 orders in 27 minutes

2:30 — The origin story: building a community before building a product

5:45 — The Triathlon model: how $7 margins conquered China

8:00 — “Unicorpse”: the crash from #1 to #5

10:30 — The impossible pivot: Costco-meets-Ikea for geeks

14:00 — Why this could only happen in China (and Apple’s accidental role)

17:30 — The Huawei vacancy: when luck met preparation

19:45 — The SU7 and the ecosystem endgame

The original written piece is here:

How Xiaomi Broke Every Law of Corporate Death

Same story, different medium

Some of you will prefer to read. Some will prefer to watch. I’m curious which one lands harder for you.

This is an experiment. I’m testing whether a video essay format works alongside the written newsletter you already know. Your feedback matters more than you think. If you enjoy this, let me know in the comments. Share it with someone who’d find it useful. These signals genuinely help me decide what to do more of and what to drop.

Thanks for being here. Stay curious.

— Howard