Chinese ride-hailing service giant Didi Chuxing (Didi) said on Thursday it completed a $7.3 billion financing round, one of the largest private equity funding rounds globally.
The round includes $4.5 billion in equity fundraising from Apple Inc, China Life Insurance, Ant Financial Services and other new shareholders, along with existing investors Tencent Holdings, Alibaba Group Holding, China Merchants Bank, and Japan-based SoftBank Group Corp, among others, according to a press release Didi sent to the Global Times on Thursday.
China Merchants Bank has committed to being the lead arranger for a syndicated loan facility to Didi of up to $2.5 billion, according to Didi. China Life Insurance, the country's biggest insurer by market value, added a long-term debt investment of 2 billion yuan ($304 million).
The money the company raised in this round will be used for technology upgrading, big data research and R&D into new business lines and opportunities. With this round, Didi said it has $10.5 billion in disposable funds.
Didi claims it holds more than 87 percent of the private-car hailing market in China, along with more than 99 percent of the taxi-hailing segment.
Didi and its rival US-based Uber Technologies Inc are both raising funds to boost their development. Uber announced in June that it had raised $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
Uber has more than $11 billion in disposable funds, Reuters reported on Thursday.
Executives of Uber and Didi emphasized their companies' progress toward profitability when they spoke at a technology conference in Hong Kong on June 3, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Didi is profitable in more than 200 of the 400 Chinese cities in which it operates, and it is expected to achieve overall profitability "very soon," Li Zijian, Didi's senior director of international strategy, was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
Uber China is spending 80 percent less on each trip in the country than it did a year ago, said Liu Zhen, senior vice president for strategy for Uber China.
Both companies are reducing subsidies for drivers and operating costs.
