BARCELONA — Xiaomi plans to begin selling its electric vehicles outside of China “within the next few years,” company President William Lu said on Sunday.

Lu made the announcement at Xiaomi’s product launch at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. While there were no concrete timelines, his comments underscore the Chinese technology giant’s ambitions in the global EV market to take on players like Tesla.

“I cannot share too many details but I am so excited to tell our global users that Xiaomi will be releasing EVs for the sale in global markets within the next few years,” Lu said.

This week, Xiaomi launched its first premium EV in China called the SU7 Ultra, which starts at 529,000 Chinese yuan ($72,627). Lu said the car racked up 15,000 orders in 24 hours and will be on display at the company’s booth at MWC.

It’s only Xiaomi’s second electric car after its announcing its foray into the EV segment in 2021. The company’s first vehicle, called the SU7, was launched last year in March. The company, which is best-known as a smartphone player, only sells its EVs in China but it is the world’s third-largest smartphone vendor.

Xiaomi’s SU7 has been successful, with the company delivering more than 100,000 units last year.

Xiaomi’s EV boom, along with a recovery in smartphone sales, has helped the company’s stock, which is listed in Hong Kong, surge almost 300% over the last 12 months.

The Beijing-headquartered company is looking to ride that wave with a new high-end phone called the Xiaomi 15 Ultra launched on Sunday, which it hopes will challenge Samsung on a global stage.

Cryptocurrencies rallied on Sunday after President Donald Trump announced the creation of a U.S. strategic crypto reserve that will include bitcoin and ether, as well as XRP,  Solana’s SOL token and Cardano’s ADA, he said in a post on Truth Social.

“A U.S. Crypto Reserve will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden Administration, which is why my Executive Order on Digital Assets directed the Presidential Working Group to move forward on a Crypto Strategic Reserve that includes XRP, SOL, and ADA,” the post said. “I will make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World.”

“And, obviously, BTC and ETH, as other valuable Cryptocurrencies, will be at the heart of the Reserve,” he said in a follow-up post.

XRP surged 33% after the announcement while the token tied to Solana jumped 22%. Cardano’s coin soared more than 60%.

Bitcoin and ether gained 9% and 11%, respectively.

This is the first time Trump has specified his support for a crypto “reserve” versus a “stockpile.” While the former involves actively buying crypto in regular installments, a stockpile would simply not sell any of the crypto currently held by the U.S. government.

Trump first introduced the idea of a national bitcoin stockpile last summer at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, one of the industry’s largest conferences, where he began courting the crypto vote. At the same event, Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis introduced her proposal for a national strategic bitcoin reserve.

After his re-election in November, the drumbeat for a strategic bitcoin reserve grew louder, helping send the price of the flagship cryptocurrency to new all-time highs. That seemed to come to a halt after Trump issued his executive order on crypto in late January. It called for the President’s Working Group on crypto to evaluate the “potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile, potentially derived from cryptocurrencies lawfully seized by the Federal Government through its law enforcement efforts,” among other things.

The industry had a lukewarm response to the language, — in part because investors expected a focus on bitcoin, whereas the term “digital assets” suggested the stockpile could include other cryptocurrencies without giving specifics.

Bitcoin had been in consolidation since the executive order. It just closed out its worst month since 2022, with its performance driven by macro uncertainty as it’s been absent a crypto specific catalyst.

Trump is hosting the first White House Crypto Summit on Friday, and investors will be watching closely for more clues about the direction of the reserve plans.

WATCH: What the SEC’s new crypto strategy means for the industry

BARCELONA — Honor on Sunday pledged $10 billion in artificial intelligence investments over the next five years and announced a deepening partnership with Google, as the Chinese smartphone maker looks to bolster its market share overseas.

The investment plan, revealed at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, is designed to reposition the firm from a smartphone player into an “AI device ecosystem company,” according to Honor.

The Chinese company is somewhat of an upstart in the smartphone world, after spinning off from Huawei in 2020 when the tech giant was hit with U.S. sanctions. Since then, Honor has looked to expand outside of China and push into the higher-end part of the market where Apple and Samsung play.

The company has made some headway by releasing some innovative devices, including foldable phones, but it still remains a small player globally. Its smartphone market share outside of China stood at 2.3% in 2024 versus 1.7% in 2023, according to IDC data.

An Honor spokesperson told CNBC the money would go toward putting AI into hardware as well as next generation AI agents, which are often described as more advanced virtual assistants.

Another part of the investment will go toward creating a “platform for a wide range of AI devices.”

“This is not limited to our own devices, but also AI devices from different partners, so the different kinds of AI devices can talk to each other, and consumers can have more choices and seamless experiences,” the Honor spokesperson said.

A small portion of the investment will also be used to “prepare for the AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) era.”

AGI generally refers to AI that is smarter than humans.