Uber Rival in China Gets $4 Billion

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 21, 6:20AM EST

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As Uber struggles in the European Union after a court judgment that it is a taxi company and not a tech one, and a constant round of management changes and fights among board members, it finds that a major competitor has raised a huge sum.

Lyft is generally considered Uber’s major rival. However, a China-based rival could cause trouble as well. Didi Chuxing announced it found impressive funding:

Didi Chuxing, the world’s leading mobile transportation platform, today announced the completion of a new equity funding round of over USD 4 billion to support AI capacity-building, international expansion, and new business initiatives, including the development of new energy vehicle service networks.

In a testament to strong investor confidence in the strategic vision and leadership of DiDi’s management, Chinese and international institutions joined the latest fundraising round.

With a substantial cash reserve, DiDi plans to scale up investments in AI talent and technologies, to further build up its intelligent driving and smart transportation capabilities, and to bring more innovative and diversified transportation services to broader communities around the world. We will also embark on initiatives in building new energy vehicle service networks, as part of the company’s efforts to lead the transformation of automobile and transportation industries and work towards global energy interconnection.

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The “communities around the world” is what should worry Uber.

The ride-sharing business is getting crowed, and it has caused investors to be wary of Uber. As part of plans for its most recent round of funding, a Japanese tech giant and allies tried to cut Uber’s value by 30% from $48 billion. Recode posted the first report on the plans.

Uber also is up against a number of major car companies that want to start their own car sharing offers. GM in particular, launched a unit called Maven. The large manufacturers see ride-sharing car sales as a way to combat an overall decline in the purchase of cars by individual buyers.

As more competition lines up against Uber, it just got another big one in Didi Chuxing.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.