Full Truck Alliance, a Chinese startup that provides an Uber-like service for the trucking industry, is raising about $1.7 billion to further expand its business ahead of an initial public offering next year, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company, which counts Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. and Alphabet Inc. among its many high-profile backers, is being valued at $10 billion before the capital raise, the people said. Fidelity International and private-equity firm Permira are among the investors that are planning to take part in the latest funding round, according to one of the people.
Full Truck Alliance, also known as Manbang Group in China, previously raised about $2 billion in early 2018 at a $6 billion valuation. Besides SoftBank and Alphabet, investors in that earlier round included Sequoia Capital China, Tencent Holdings Ltd. and GGV Capital, according to CB Insights. It previously sought to raise more money later that year, but ended up postponing those plans.
The company is based in Guiyang, in China’s Southwestern Guizhou province, and was created in 2017 from a merger of two of China’s largest “truck-hailing” companies. It runs a mobile app that connects truck drivers to businesses that need to ship goods within the country. Full Truck Alliance currently operates in more than 300 Chinese cities and offers logistics financing, insurance, fuel cards and new-truck sales to its users.
Full Truck Alliance collects an annual membership fee of as much as $250 from some shippers on its platform, and recently started charging a commission for every transaction that it facilitates. The firm also collects financing and other fees.
