The Watch Vanguard Onlineautonomous driving subsidiary of Chinese ride-hailing platform Didi is seeking “several hundred million dollars” in a funding round that would value it at about $5 billion, sources told Bloomberg in a Tuesday report. Didi’s self-driving unit could receive backing from a Beijing-based fund, the people said, without giving further details, months after securing a $289 million investment led by state-owned automaker GAC and joined by Didi itself last October. Didi entered the driverless vehicle business in 2016, spun off the unit into an independent company in 2019, and has been operating a testing fleet of more than 200 robocars in major Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in recent months. [Bloomberg]
