It has over 450 million customers in 400 cities across China.
So popular in fact, that is has backing from the likes of Alibaba, Tencent and Apple. In previous funding rounds, they have raised $13 billion from investors. They have now added another $4 billion from as yet unknown investors in order to aid their global expansion plans.
There are rumours that Softbank and Mubadala Capital, the Abu Dhabi state fund have contributed, but Didi have only stated that “Chinese and international institutions joined the latest fundraising round.
Didi will use the new funding to further develop their electric vehicle initiative and push forward their AI technology, as well as launching the service in other countries.
At the moment, Uber is valued between $68-70 billion. However, a recent investment in Uber from Softbank was reportedly discounted at at 20%. Depending on the results of Ubers current funding round, this could make Didi the highest valued ridesharing company in the world.
Didi actually acquired Uber’s Chinese operations, making it the largest firm of it’s kind in the country. Whilst the acquistion was announced in 2016, it has still not completed as it is pending full approval. Regardless, it now has a monopoly over the Chinese market.
It is unknown where Didi plans to expand physically next. In other parts of the world it will have competition from the likes of Ola, Careem, Lyft, Taxify and Uber. Bloomberg has reported that Taiwan is where a “franchise model” will be tested out, but Didi has also been connected to an expansion to Mexico.
