DiDi shows all Chinese tech giants must first answer to Beijing
Visitors pass a sign for Chinese ride-hailing service DiDi at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing in 2017. Didi Global Inc. holds vast amounts of sensitive data from half a billion annual active users, mostly in China.
(Associated Press)
Bloomberg
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To the world’s investors, the saga over DiDi Global Inc. has made China’s biggest tech companies a riskier bet as President Xi Jinping seeks to control one of the country’s most valuable resources: Big data.
DiDi is by most measures an appealing success story. The company controls almost the entire ride-hailing market in China and counts SoftBank Group Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. as major shareholders. DiDi was actually profitable in the first quarter, a rarity for the industry. Its initial public offering of stock last week was the second-biggest in the U.S. by a company based in China, and it was well received. DiDi sold 317 million shares — about 10% more than originally planned.