China's ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing is in talks with investment banks to launch an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong as soon as this year, according to chinastarmarket.cn.
Didi Chuxing is targeting a valuation of more than 600 billion Hong Kong dollars (about $80 billion) and is expected to become one of the largest IPO deals in the Hong Kong market in recent years.
According to the report, Didi's car sharing, bike sharing and finance businesses have become profitable at scale.
The company has also betting big on self-driving. It announced last August that it was upgrading its automated driving division to an independent company to focus on automated driving research and development, product applications and related business development.
In May, Didi Chuxing's automated driving division closed over $500 million in funding led by SoftBank Group's Vision Fund 2. With the funding, Didi Chuxing will expand its automated driving, vehicle-road collaboration, and related AI technologies. Inputs.
Didi Chuxing said last year that it would start using self-driving cars to pick up and drop off passengers in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen this year, then expand the program beyond China in 2021.
