Didi was founded as Didi Dache in Beijing in 2012 as a taxi-hailing app, later adding private hire. Backed by influential investors, including the internet giant Tencent, it grew rapidly and, in 2015, merged with its competitor Kuaidi Dache, which had investment from another of China's biggest tech companies, Alibaba.

DiDi (Didi Chuxing) is a private, publicly traded company headquartered in Beijing, but it is not "owned" by the Chinese government in a traditional state-owned enterprise (SOE) sense. However, the Chinese state maintains significant regulatory influence over the company. In recent years, DiDi has faced intense scrutiny from the Cyberspace Administration of China regarding data security, leading to its delisting from the NYSE. While major shareholders include international firms like SoftBank, Uber, and Tencent, the Chinese government has reportedly taken "golden shares" or board seats in various tech giants to ensure corporate alignment with national goals. So, while it is a private global entity operating in dozens of countries, it operates under the strategic oversight and regulatory framework of the Chinese authorities, making its relationship with the state more complex than a standard Western corporation.