SoftBank confirms $5b investment in Didi's $5.5b round

The Japanese tech conglomerate disclosed the investment in its earnings report for the 2017 financial year, but did not specify whether the entire commitment was part of the institutional funding round. Several other groups have made separate strategic investments in Didi in the past year.

A SoftBank spokesperson has since confirmed the full $5 billion went into Didi’s most recent round, which valued the business at more than $50 billion. Other participants included new investor Silver Lake as well as existing backers China Bank of Communications and China Merchants Bank.

It came 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. That round also marked SoftBank’s entry into the company. It preceded an acquisition of 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. The new capital will be used to support global expansion and continued investment in artificial intelligence-based technologies.

SoftBank is an investor in three other ride-hailing companies globally: India’s Ola, Southeast Asia’s Grab and US-based Lyft. Didi has also made equity investments in each of these counterparts, and the four have forged a strategic partnership that allows each company to use the others’ services.

Didi facilitated about 200 million transactions per day last October, making it the second largest online transaction platform globally after Alibaba’s e-commerce site Taobao. Alibaba represents SoftBank’s most successful and significant investment in China. It holds a 28% stake worth about $83 billion, having raised $8.9 billion through a share sale last year.

SoftBank is also in the process of raising the SoftBank Vision Fund, which is targeting $100 billion. It is part of a broader drive to keep the company at the forefront of technology innovation globally and allow other investors to participate alongside it.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Technology
• China
• Softbank
• Growth capital
• TMT