China ride-hailing app operator Didi raises $5.5b
Chinese ride-hailing app operator Didi Chuxing, which is backed by an assortment of private equity and strategic investors, has raised $5.5 billion in a fresh round of funding.
The company did not name the investors or disclose the valuation of the round. However, a source close to the situation told AVCJ that Didi is now worth more than $50 billion and the round featured new investor Silver Lake as well as existing backers such as SoftBank Group, China Bank of Communications and China Merchants Bank.
The capital will be used to support Didi’s global expansion and continued investment in artificial intelligence-based technologies. The company opened a self-driving research laboratory - Didi Labs – in Mountain View, California earlier this year.
"As a global technology leader, Didi is striving to advance the transformation of transportation and automotive industries through active internationalization. It is also bringing value to urban transportation markets around the world through cutting-edge big-data capabilities, products and expertise,” the company said in a statement.
The round comes less than a year after Didi – which was created in 2015 through the merger of rivals Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache – closed an even larger round of $7.3 billion, comprising $4.5 billion in equity and $2.8 billion in debt. Equity investors included China Life Insurance, Alibaba Group’s Ant Financial and Apple. Two months later, Didi acquired Uber’s China operation in a deal that valued the combined entity at $35 billion.
Didi claims to be the world’s largest mobile transportation platform, with 400 million registered users across more than 400 Chinese cities. It offers a wide range of mobile-enabled mobility services, including taxi and private car hailing, ride sharing and bus-booking services. Didi faciliated about 200 million per day last October, making it as the second largest online transaction platform globally after Alibaba’s e-commerce site Taobao.
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