Tech Insider: Didi Rival Cao Cao Raises $589 Million, Xiaomi Takes Global Wearable Band Top Spot

Welcome to Caixin’s Tech Insider, your twice-weekly wrap on the movers, shakers and deal-makers in China’s tech scene.

Didi rival Cao Cao completes $589 million series B funding

Cao Cao Mobility said on Monday that it has raised 3.8 billion yuan ($589 million) in a series B funding round to fund research and development, expand its business and improve service quality.

Established in 2015, Cao Cao now operates in 62 cities in China and has more than 60 million registered users. The company said that it recorded a 150% jump in ride-hailing orders in July compared with a year ago and monthly active users reached 10 million.

Baidu Ventures raises $400 million for hard-tech fund

Baidu Ventures, an investment affiliate of tech giant Baidu Inc., on Friday announced the final closing of its Fund III at $400 million, pushing the total assets under its management to more than $700 million.

The fund will mainly provide financial support to early-stage hard-tech startups, especially those focusing on developing proprietary technologies through long-term R&D investment, Baidu Ventures CEO Gao Xue said in a statement. Gao added that the venture capital firm is building a professional investment team to follow the future direction of technological innovation.

Since its founding in 2017, Baidu Ventures has invested in nearly 100 firms in the artificial intelligence, semiconductor, life science and smart city construction sectors, according to its website.

As Huawei falls, Xiaomi rises as the world’s No. 1 seller of wearable bands

With a global market share of 19.6%, or 8 million units shipped, Xiaomi Corp. took the crown as the world’s largest seller of wearable bands in the second quarter of 2021, according to a new report by research firm Canalys.

This figure represents a year-on-year increase of 2.6%, which Canalys analyst Cynthia Chen attributed to Xiaomi’s “wise move to hasten the release of the Mi Band 6, which is a more compelling device than its predecessor” despite India, one of the company’s biggest overseas markets, being excluded from the product’s initial global launch list.

Xiaomi’s Chinese peer Huawei fell to third place with a global market share of 9.2% after it suffered a year-on-year decrease of 54% in shipments to 3.7 million of the devices, making it the only vendor of the top five to experience a sales drop, according to Canalys. In the same period of last year, the U.S.-sanctioned company was the world’s No. 1 wearable band brand with a global market share of 21%.

In the second quarter of this year, Apple, Fitbit and Samsung came in second, fourth and fifth with respective global market shares of 19.3%, 7.3% and 6.1%.

EHang expands self-flying vehicle testing to Estonia

Guangzhou-based startup EHang Holdings Ltd. is testing its self-flying vehicles globally even as profits remaining elusive.

The latest country to allow such testing is EU member Estonia where EHang last week completed the maiden trial flights of its flagship self-flying people-mover, the EHang 216, and its cargo drone Falcon on an air route between Tartu Airport and the Estonian Aviation Museum.

EHang said that it has obtained a permit that allows it to test its autonomous aerial vehicles in designated Estonian airspace through the end of this year under an EU project named GOF 2.0 Integrated Urban Airspace Validation that aims to use unmanned aerial vehicles in air taxi operations in urban airspace.

The U.S.-listed company, which reported widening losses and plummeting revenues on weak demand for its products in the second quarter, said that it has so far conducted test flights for its self-flying vehicles in 10 countries including South Korea, Japan, Austria and Canada.

Express delivery giant SF spends $77 million to improve how its employees get treated

Chinese express delivery giant SF Holding Co. Ltd. has launched its Employee Sustainable Development Guarantee Plan to improve treatment of its staff, according to domestic media reports, in a renewed effort to follow a government call to better protect couriers’ rights.

Under the plan, SF will earmark 500 million yuan ($77 million) to help more than 200,000 frontline delivery workers further their vocational education and improve their families’ quality of life, according to the reports.

In July, the State Administration for Market Regulation and six other government agencies jointly issued guidelines requiring delivery service providers to guarantee their workers an income above minimum wage, social insurance and laxer delivery deadlines after big players in the sector including Meituan became a target of criticism for the poor treatment of their drivers, most of whom are not covered by basic social and medical insurance.

BYD reports dramatic growth in new-energy passenger vehicle sales in August

Warren Buffett-backed electric carmaker BYD Co. Ltd. sold 60,508 new-energy passenger vehicles in August, consisting of 30,382 fully electric cars and 30,126 plug-in hybrids, more than quadruple the number in the same month of last year, the company said in an exchange filing on Friday, as demand for electric vehicles continue to grow in the world’s largest auto market.

China is expected to sell 1.7 million new-energy vehicles in the first eight months of this year, up from 600,000 units in the same period of last year, Reuters reported, citing comments made Saturday by Xin Guobin, vice minister of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Chipmaker SMIC to invest $8.8 billion in Shanghai plant

China’s largest contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. on Friday unveiled plans to spend $8.87 billion on a new factory in Shanghai that will focus on the production of 28-nanometer and above integrated circuits and technical services. The factory will have a planned monthly production capacity of 100,000 12-inch wafers.

Didi denies reports of Beijing government-led takeover

Didi Global Inc. on Saturday denied a Bloomberg report that the Beijing municipal government is coordinating a proposal for state-backed companies to take a controlling stake in the ride-hailing firm as it faces regulatory scrutiny.

“Foreign media reports of the Beijing municipal government coordinating companies to invest in Didi are untrue,” the company said in a statement on social media platform Weibo.

The Caixin Tech Insider is compiled by Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com) and edited by Joshua Dummer (joshuadummer@caixin.com). Send us your tips and feedback.

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