Didi Chuxing has caught the eye of Booking Holdings, with a $500 million capital injection and a major strategic partnership.
The China-based ground transportation specialist, covering taxis and ride-hailing and sharing services, is working with the Booking.com owner to "offer more comprehensive and personalized quality travel services around the world."
As part of the investment, Booking Holdings will gain on-demand car services on its selection of mobile applications.
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In turn, Didi users will get access to accommodation inventory supplied via Booking.com and Agoda.
Didi has been on an intensive capital-raising road for the last two years, having attracted around $17.5 billion from a broad range of backers, including Apple, Foxconn Technology and Mubadala Investments.
In the last eight months alone it has secured a $4 billion deal in December last year and a corporate round of $264.8 million in April 2018.
Total funding to date for the five-year-old company is almost $21 billion.
Growing brand
The company has its core user base in China and other Asia Pacific countries, but it has also turned its eye westwards during 2018 with a $900 million deal to take over Brazilian service 99.
Todd Henrich, senior vice president and head of corporate development for Booking Holdings, says: "Didi has clear advantages in technology and scale in the shared mobility industry.
"We believe that together we can offer smarter transportation services to our brands' customers, and help Didi's customers with seamless access to the products and services the brands in our company provide throughout the world."
Booking Holdings has already integrated both its car hire service RentalCars and transfer/hailing business RideWays into Booking.com.
It is unclear as yet if the Didi agreement will work alongside or be included in both of those two brands.
Didi's platform features taxis, buses, ride-sharing, food delivery, bike rental and chauffeur services.
It claims to have 21 million drivers on its books.