Yahoo Co-Founder Jerry Yang Joins Didi Chuxing’s Board

Didi Chuxing, the $16 billion USD ride-hailing service dominating China, has appointed Yahoo Inc co-founder Jerry Yang to its board, strengthening a network of existing investment relationships between Didi Chuxing, Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd, SoftBank Group Corp and Yahoo.

Both Alibaba and Yahoo received early investment from SoftBank. Alibaba then backed Kuaidi, which merged with Didi in early 2015 (later rebranded under Didi Chuxing). Mr. Yang is also an investor in Alibaba, and sits on the e-commerce company’s board alongside Jack Ma and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son.

Didi isn’t the only ride-hailing operation seeking to consolidate management across foreign investment partners in China. In September search giant Baidu appointed Uber CFO Brent Callinicos to their board. Baidu is a core investor in Uber’s China-side service.

Softbank is also an investor in India’s Ola Cabs and Singapore’s GrabTaxi, two of the companies within the consolidated network of ride-hailing companies that now also includes Canada’s Lyft. 

Didi has aggressively sought to increase their market share in 2015. Earlier this week the company’s other core investor, Tencent, oversaw a ban on private Uber accounts within their highly-popular messaging service WeChat. 

Mr. Yang is taking the seat as Yahoo is seeking to spin off their $30 billion USD stake in Alibaba.