China's top smartphone vendor Xiaomi, which recently surpassed LG and Lenovo to become the third-largest smartphone maker in the world, has announced that it has raised $1.1 billion in its latest funding round valuing the company at a whopping $45 billion, pre-money.

With this, the four-year-old company, which is often referred to as the 'Apple of China', has become the world's most valuable technology startup, surpassing all other startups including ride-sharing service Uber, which recently raised $1.2 billion at a total valuation of around $41 billion.

"We will strive to continue bringing innovation to everyone, with a goal of producing high-quality, high-performance devices with great user experience," said Xiaomi co-founder and president Bin Lin in a Facebook post, adding that the company will unveil its next flagship device in January 2015.

Some of the investors who participated in this round of funding include All-Stars Investment, DST, GIC, Hopu Fund, and Yunfeng Capital.

Founded in 2010, Xiaomi quickly rose to success thanks to its competitive prices, focus on its own mobile software known as MIUI, as well as targeted marketing. However, despite the phenomenal growth, the company still lags far behind the likes of Samsung and Apple in terms of revenue and profits -- a recent financial report showed Xiaomi made just 347.48 million yuan ($56.15 million) of profit on 26.58 billion yuan ($4.30 billion) in revenue last year, compared to Apple, which made around $25.4 billion (nearly six times) in revenue in Greater China during the same period.