China's largest ride-hailing application Didi Chuxing said on Friday that it has received $ 1 billionin strategic investment from US tech giant Apple Inc.
The investment from Apple is the single largest investment Didi has ever received. Apple isamong a group of Chinese and international institutions that are bankrolling Didi's ambitiousexpansion plan in its latest fundraising round.
Through this investment, Apple has become a strategic investor in Didi, and joins Tencent,Alibaba and other key supporters to help further Didi's mission of building a data-driven ride-sharing platform to serve hundreds of millions of Chinese drivers and passengers.
Cheng Wei, founder and CEO of Didi, said: "The endorsement from Apple is an enormousencouragement and inspiration for our four-year-old company. Didi will work hard with ourdrivers, riders and global partners, to make available to every citizen flexible and reliable mobilitychoices, and help cities solve transportation, environmental and employment challenges."
"Didi exemplifies the innovation taking place in the iOS developer community in China," said TimCook, Apple's CEO. "We are extremely impressed by the business they've built and theirexcellent leadership team, and we look forward to supporting them as they grow."
Building on its data mining and analysis capabilities, Didi said in a statement on Friday that itrecords over 11 million rides a day on its platform, serving close to 300 million users across over400 Chinese cities with a diverse range of mobile technology-based transportation options.