from Hacker News

Apple invests $1B in Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing

by ssclafani on 5/13/16, 2:21 AM with 126 comments

• by devy on 5/13/16, 5:31 AM

  There were a few ideas floating around Chinese tech blogs, of the most possible reasons are:

  1. Integrate Apple Pay into Didi Chuxing apps, which is estimated to have 300MM users in China[1]. Didi currently only accepts payment with Weixin(aka WeChat) Pay and Ali Pay (aka Ant Financial Services Group, owned by Alibaba Group).

  2. Massive data points for developing Apple's self-driving technology. Didi operates in 400 Chinese cities with over 11 million rides per day, and accounts for 80% private car hailing market and 99% taxi hailing market.[2]

  3. And yes, investing into Chinese tech sector give them a better leverage in negotiations with the government and also like sbuccini said, association with other Didi's major investors.

  [1]: http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/12/11669178/apple-invests-1-b...

  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didi_Chuxing

• by sbuccini on 5/13/16, 2:39 AM

  Apple has huge stores of cash sitting overseas. They can't bring it home without subject to large tax penalties. With that cash stockpile growing, it seems like they're having trouble finding ways to put that money to work overseas. I wonder if they would have still made this investment if they had the ability to bring that money back stateside without hefty tax liabilities.

  Regardless, a $1B is not a small chunk of change, even for Apple. Clearly, natural synergies could arise when Project Titan matures. But Apple tightly coupling itself with a rising player in the Chinese tech sector is a smart play (not to mention associating itself with other notable Didi investors like Alibaba). We've seen similar moves by Uber, who took a large investment from Baidu.

  Interesting times ahead.

• by salimmadjd on 5/13/16, 3:28 AM

  Apple Map/Siri and Google map eventually will become the interface to ordering car sharing. Especially once there is autonomous cars and Uber or Lyft do not own the driver-side of the equation, ride sharing will become a bit like ordering rental cars from Kayak.

  The same way Facebook is becoming the interface to content, both google and apple will own the consumer side of the cars and help you pick the best deal or cheapest option. It could be from Uber, a guy who owns a fleet of 20 autonomous cars or Hertz, etc.

  This moves totally makes sense for Apple as they will move to own the consumer side of this market.

• by aresant on 5/13/16, 2:38 AM

  Are they investing in Didi the ride sharing company or investing in Didi, Uber's arch rival in China?

  The chess game afoot in the autonomous vehicle battle is attracting some strange bedfellows between Apple, Google, tesla, ford, Mercedes, Uber, Lyft, Volvo, Nvidia, etc.

  The end game is outrageously big, generationally big, and it's going to be a treat to watch the Titans lock horns.

• by zer00eyz on 5/13/16, 4:43 AM

  Apple didn't do this because they are building a "self driving car" that they are going to sell.

  Apple wants to get ibooks and movies selling in china again, it is vital to apples car strategy. This move will give them some leverage with china in getting those markets back to being active.

  If you know anything about Tim Cook, you know that he is master of the supply chain. I don't think that someone like that is going to jump into apple building its own car.

  So if apple isn't going to build a car, what ARE they doing with all these people on the pay roll who have worked with cars.

  Its simple, apple wants to own the dashboard of the car, were not talking about "carplay" were talking about the WHOLE dashboard. Once you own the dashboard, your hooked into location, and destination (apple owns a mapping solution) they can leave it to vendors of vehicles to do the "self driving" compontent.

  Why would any automaker want apple in the dashboard? Why would apple want the dashboard? Its simple, entertainment! Apple with the beats acquisition owns something that looks like radio, and music has always been there with iTunes. There is no reason you can't rent movies and books into the back seat as well.

• by Aelinsaar on 5/13/16, 2:47 AM

  It must be nice to have so much cash that a $1B stake can be seen as somewhat speculative. Incredible really.

• by electriclove on 5/13/16, 3:14 AM

  This is about gathering real world data to further autonomous driving.

  Google has their small fleet collecting data; Tesla has tons of vehicles now collecting data; Uber has the potential to start collecting data. Apple has no ability to collect real world data... Until now?? Smart move Apple

• by radicsge on 5/13/16, 4:42 AM

  I hardly doubt this money is for real investment most probably just to please to government, this 1B is eventually will be distributed among citizens without a job. Also the big cities became super crowded as being extremly urbanized. In some days traffic jams starts at 3 and between 5-7 everything is just stuck. It might be also a way how goverment try to slightly reduce these issues.

• by molmalo on 5/13/16, 9:40 AM

  While I do believe that they are investing in Didi with the dual intent of gaining access to their massive riding data, and position themselves as providers for future autonomous vehicles, I also believe (and I could be very wrong) that they may be funneling money through China, for their US-based facilities.

  I mean, could this be related with Faraday Future? The mysterious "US-based, Chinese-backed company" that plans to invest $1B in California, "focused on the development of intelligent electric vehicles and mobility solutions" [1], that many suspected it's a front for Apple's car.

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_Future

• by desireco42 on 5/13/16, 2:43 AM

  And that is it. Owning a piece of such large Chinese company, Apple also gets a foothold into decision making in China and gets more say. Very smart.

  Jobs was a different person, Tim Cook leads company differently. I really like how he plays this.

• by kirykl on 5/13/16, 2:56 AM

  With the scale of Chinese companies is $1b a large investment? The article says Didi has already raised several billion

• by iamgopal on 5/13/16, 4:13 AM

  How economics works ? 1B$ for an app ? Innovative Small scale business are struggling to raise a million, and blatant copy cats raising billions ? Capitalism works correctly tho, what they have earn has to give back to earn more.

• by eddieplan9 on 5/13/16, 6:29 AM

  From the article:

  > "(The deal reflects) our continued confidence in the long term in China’s economy," Cook said.

  If this is not kowtowing, I don't know what is. This is very disappointing coming from a company like Apple.

• by jackieluo on 5/13/16, 3:47 AM

  I haven't been this surprised by anything Apple's done in years. If moves like this one keep happening, the next few years are going to be pretty exciting to watch.

• by swyman on 5/13/16, 7:29 AM

  Probably dumb hypothetical: What happens if Apple comes up with an excuse to remove Uber from the (Chinese) App Store and corresponding iPhones?

• by davidiach on 5/13/16, 11:13 AM

  "The company said it completes more than 11 million rides a day, with more than 87 percent of the market for private car-hailing in China."

  If they make $1.00 for each ride, that's already more than $4 billion in revenue per year.

• by free2rhyme214 on 5/13/16, 3:30 AM

  I was just starting to doubt Apple, especially with their lackluster effort in artificial reality, and now I'm doing an about face.

  This is an incredibly smart move and a great long term play which will bode well for Project Titan.

• by chj on 5/13/16, 7:34 AM

  One thing to be sure, uber will have a hard time in China.

• by dingo_bat on 5/13/16, 6:34 AM

  Is there any reason Didi Chuxing is valued higher than Uber. Uber is the innovator and present all around the world. Why is it still lower-valued than Didi?

• by sangd on 5/13/16, 3:52 AM

  It looks like Apple wants to get the Chinese super star startup(s) to depend more on their giant pile of oversea cash; thus to protect their brand, make their strong hold on this market which is influenced very much by the state. Look at their stock today, Google is surpassing and it has no other future rather than protecting its iPhone, iPad, Macs which are pretty much saturated.

• by qaq on 5/13/16, 11:36 AM

  Apple to follow in Yahoo footsteps skip 10 years this might be the most valuable part of Apple :)

• by JayeshSidhwani on 5/13/16, 5:08 AM

  Could this also be because Apple would want to test their experiments in self-driving cars?