Watch out, Lenovo.

An old (yet still young) enemy is even stronger.

Lenovo recently grabbed third place in the global smartphone marketplace after closing on its Motorola Mobility acquisition. But the tech giant faces an even stronger threat from China-based Xiamoi, which has just raised $1 billion and is aiming to retake that third spot.

Xiaomi also recently bumped Lenovo to No. 3 from No. 2 in the home market for both companies behind Samsung.

And Xiaomi keeps making news.

The four-year-old privately held firm is now valued at $45 billion – three times the worth of publicly traded Lenovo and worth even more than other hot-shot tech upstarts such as Uber.

Bin Lin, co-founder and president of Xiaomi, boasted about the big fund-raise in a post at Facebook:

“We just completed the latest round of funding last week, raising US$1.1 billion at valuation of US$45 billion.

“Investors include All-Stars Investment, DST, GIC, Hopu Fund and Yunfeng Capital among others. This is an affirmation of Xiaomi’s stellar results in four years, and heralds a new phase for the company.”

New Flagship Coming

That new phase includes a new “flagship” device in its “Mi” line to be announced in the next few weeks.

Maybe Xiamoi will steal headlines at the global Consumer Electronics Show next week in Las Vegas,

“We will strive to continue bringing innovation to everyone, with a goal of producing high-quality, high-performance devices with great user experience,” Bin wrote.

“In January 2015, we will be unveiling our next flagship device. Big thanks to all Mi fans, business partners and investors for your strong support.”

Lenovo always has a big presence at Las Vegas and no doubt will be rolling out new products itself.

Xiaomi and Lenovo both are aiming at No. 1 Samsung and No. 2 in the smartphone market. But with all that new cash and a growing product line, Xiaomi is right now a threat to regain the No. 3 spot.

Of course, Lenovo, which operates its global executive headquarters in Morrisville, has many other strengths as a company. It’s No. 1 in PCs and a growing player in Internet connected devices as well as servers. Services such as “cloud” and apps continue to be added. But smartphones have been a huge growth driver for Lenovo, so you can bet no one in the Lenovo executive suite is underestimating the threat an even-better funded Xiaomi represents.