The world's biggest ride-hailing companies, US-based Uber and China-based Didi Chuxing, are smashing records for private-company financing.
Didi Chuxing has raised more than $7 billion in cash and debt from investors and lenders, according to a report today by the Wall Street Journal.
UPDATE: Didi has now issued a release "Press Release_Didi Chuxing Completes USD 7.3 Billion Financing Round".
The raise includes investors like the nation's largest life insurer China Life (pitching in $600 million) and Apple (pitching in $1 billion).
That adds to $4.4 billion previously raised, for more than $10 billion in funding. Neither company is believed to be profitable, and both have high cash burn rates, according to The Information.
UPDATE: Uber tells the FT that it has:
"now reached profitability in all its developed markets
."
Last week Uber announced that it had raised $3.5 billion from a Saudi Arabian fund, bringing its total in equity raised to date to $13.3 billion, according to Datafox.
Neither company has released precise figures on their war chests, but, suffice it to say, neither will likely need to go public to raise capital anytime soon. That also means a lack of public transparency about growth rates and practices.
The investments place a valuation on Didi Chuxing of more than $25 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, while Uber’s fundraising has valued the company at more than $62 billion.
Other rivals include Israel’s Gett and US-based Lyft. As Tnooz has previously reported, "Didi co-founded the global Rides Everywhere alliance with Lyft, which gives the China-based brand a presence on the world stage and investors are increasingly referencing the brand’s potential outside China."
China is the world's largest cab-booking market by number of trips. But is it really big enough to support companies as large as Uber and Didi Chuxing? Or is a merger possible, if Uber remains in a distant second-place in that market?
And what about China's rental car giants? The Information reports that they may get pulled into the fight.
"China Auto Rental, the No. 1 rental company, is already in the ride-hailing business through a partnership with UCAR, also known as Shenzhou, which offers luxury-car rides on demand. eHi, the No. 2 player, has become an important supplier of cars for Didi and Uber drivers, who rent from the company."
Related reading from Tnooz:Uber gets $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia government (June 2016)
Apple pumps $1 billion into China’s Didi (May 2016)
Anti-Uber global alliance gets bigger as Ola and GrabTaxi join in (December 2015)
NB: Image of a Beijing highway via 06photo / BigStockPhoto.com