APYuri Milner, the Russian investor worth roughly $2 billion, believes Xiaomi will eventually become a $100 billion company.
Xiaomi was most recently valued at around $45 billion, after raising over $1 billion earlier this month. Milner is an investor.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Milner said it's Xiaomi's unprecedented growth rate that makes him believe the Chinese smartphone maker will get to that valuation soon.
"I don't think there's any company that has reached $1 billion in revenue as fast as Xiaomi. In every conceivable benchmark, it's almost unprecedented in terms of its speed of growth," Milner said.
He explained Xiaomi's global reach spanning Asian markets like India and Malaysia to emerging countries in Brazil and Turkey, as well as its diverse product offerings in smartphones, tablets, and TVs could make it China's "first global consumer brand."
"Xiaomi can take significant market share globally, but that doesn't cover the whole opportunity. There are a number of other interesting categories that Xiaomi can target," he said.
Of course, Milner is one of the early investors in Xiaomi, so his comments should be taken with a grain of salt. His investment firm Digital Sky Technologies first invested in Xiaomi back in 2012, when it was valued at $4 billion.
But it's also worth noting that Milner has a successful track record of investing in companies like Facebook and Alibaba early on before they became worth hundreds of billions of dollars. He invested in Facebook in 2009, when it was a $10 billion company, and in Alibaba back in 2011.
Then again, he also invested in Groupon, which was hailed as the fastest growing company in history when it was skyrocketing. He probably made money on that investment, but ultimately Groupon never reached the heights some thought it would.