China-headquartered on-demand ride provider Didi Chuxing secured $300m for its autonomous driving technology subsidiary yesterday, Reuters has reported.
The round was led by venture capital group IDG Capital and also featured investment banking firm Citic Group’s CPE unit as well as Russia-China Investment Fund, securities brokerage Guotai Junan International and financial services firm China Construction Bank’s CCB International unit.
Didi operates a ride hailing service that had 550 million users as of 2019 and was reported in late 2020 to be assessing the possibility of an initial public offering later this year.
The company has been testing its driverless cars since 2016, on public roads in California, Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou, before spinning those activities off into a separate business in September 2019.
Telecommunications and internet conglomerate SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 led a $500m round for the autonomous driving subsidiary in May 2020.
News of the funding came three days after Bloomberg reported that another Didi subsidiary, logistics management platform Didi Freight, is near to closing $1.5bn in funding, from IDG Capital, Citic, property developer Country Garden, Temasek, Hidden Hill Capital and Yunfeng Capital among the touted investors.
