Adriano Machado | Reuters
The chief executive of Uber Technologies, Dara Khosrowshahi.
By the summer of 2016, Uber agreed to sell its China-based business to Didi in a merger which gave it a one-fifth stake in Didi and granted ex-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick a non-voting board seat at Didi.
Didi also invested $1 billion of its own money into Uber.
At that time, Didi had expressed interest in expanding its services to Macau, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
Now, it’s not entirely a surprise that Didi is moving west.
This past February, Didi set up a division for international expansion. Next, it established a Mountain View, California, outpost where it has begun working on self-driving technology. And most recently, Didi launched an English-language version of its app, which was previously only available in Chinese.
Uber has long been one of venture capital’s most lavishly funded companies, with more than $12 billion in equity funding. Now, Didi has surpassed it with $15.1 billion in venture funding.
