At the end of last month, Didi announced the completion of a new round of financing with a financing scale of 5.5 billion US dollars. Investors come from Bank of Communications, China Merchants Bank, Softbank and Silver Lake. Among them, only Yinhu Capital is a new entrant, and the other three have invested in Didi. So far, Didi's valuation has exceeded $50 billion.

This means that Didi will rank among the startups with a valuation of more than 50 billion US dollars. At present, the market value of Uber and Ant Financial, the world's most famous startups, both exceed $60 billion.

Although Uber and Didi have merged in the China market, Uber has acquired nearly 18% of the shares of Didi, becoming the largest shareholder of Didi, but in overseas markets, the two sides are still in fierce competition, hoping to win more market share.

Although both Didi and Uber are facing challenges such as burning money and negotiating with regulators, most investors hope that Didi and Uber will first bring driverless teams into users' lives.

Although Google and Tesla's driverless technology is very advanced, Tom Mitchell, director of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, told the author that the first company to realize driverless driving will be Didi or Uber, who have the technology to flexibly deploy vehicles and are closer to users. No matter how advanced the technology is, it must be connected with users to play its role.

At present, Uber has a fleet of self-driving cars consisting of more than a dozen cars and is conducting road tests in Arizona and other places. In addition, Uber also cooperates with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to develop driverless cars. In the past short time, Uber has dug up more than 40 unmanned researchers and scientists at Carnegie Mellon University.

Cheng Wei, founder and CEO of Didi, also announced in June+10/October last year that the Didi driverless car project was under development. The company just set up an artificial intelligence lab in Mountain View, California, USA last month, and Mountain View is also the headquarters of Google.

In addition, Didi invited dozens of unmanned engineers, including Charlie Miller, a former Uber autopilot safety expert. According to the author's understanding, Cheng Wei has met with Wu Gansha, former director of Intel China Lab and founder of Shi Yu Technology, for many times to discuss cooperation matters. Shi Yu Science and Technology Company is developing a road scanning system for driverless cars.