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Didi Chuxing, one of the largest carpool companies in China, today announced a strategic partnership with Bookings Holdings (formerly Priceline), the parent company of Booking.com, which will see both companies share their resources and expertise.
Under the terms of the agreement, Bookings Group will invest $ 500 million in Didi Chuxing, and its brands – including Agoda, Kayak, Cheapflights, OpenTable and others – will work with the start-up to offer the services of car at the request of Didi. mobile app. Users of Didi Chuxing, in turn, will be able to book hotels via Booking.com or Adoga.
"Didi has clear advantages in technology and scale in the industry of shared mobility" Todd Henrich, Vice President of Development Booking Holdings, said. "We believe that together we can offer smarter transportation services to our brand customers, and help Didi's customers access the products and services that our company brands provide around the world."
Didi Chuxing is no stranger to collaborations. It is networked with Grab, Lyft, Ola, Uber, 99, Taxify and Careem, and this year has launched brand mobility services in Australia and Mexico.
"Building on its leadership and expertise in the global online travel market is the champion of a digital revolution in the travel experience," said Stephen Zhu, vice president of the strategy at Didi Chuxing, in a statement. "We look forward to seamlessly connecting each segment of the journey and enhancing each other's travel experience through a collaborative innovation with Booking brands on the products. , technology and market development. "
Didi Chuxing provides transportation services to more than 450 million users in more than 400 Chinese cities, reaching more than 80% of the world's population and covering around 1 000 cities.Bookings Holdings, meanwhile, has facilitated about 556 million hotel bookings just in 2016.
The fresh capital injection of Bookings Holdings will contribute to the growth of the city's capital. Di's global expansion di Chuxing, especially in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). In January, Didi Chuxing opened an AI research laboratory in Beijing with a team of more than 200 engineers and experts in artificial intelligence, working in collaboration with Silicon Valley on computer vision, learning deep, natural language processing and other AI. Challenges
Didi Chuxing, the product of a merger between Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache in 2015, has a closing history of mammoth finance rounds. In December, it raised $ 4 billion, becoming the second largest startup company in the world, and in April 2017 and June 2016, it raised $ 5.5 billion and $ 7.3 billion, respectively. To date, investors, including Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu and others have collectively paid more than $ 20 billion collectively into the Beijing-based transportation company.
By the way, Reuters announced today that Didi Chuxing was considering to consist of its leasing, sales, maintenance, sharing and gas distribution divisions. It's worth about $ 1.5 billion
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