Apple's unorthodox investment strategy

Apple is known for acquiring startups and absorbing their technology from the get-go. So their $1 billion investment in Didi, which only makes them a minority stakeholder. is far from the norm. What did they decide on this particular strategy? Here are a few speculated reasons:

1. Apple is known for developing everything in-house. This milestone might mark the beginning of Apple embracing inorganic growth, which we have seen, can rapidly accelerate innovation. Google, after buying YouTube. and facebook. after buying instagram, have greatly benefited from this investment strategy.

2. As a minority shareholder, Apple gets a glimpose into various segments of the chinese market. They ll also get to leverage didi's user data to optimize future store locations in china by locating frequently visited areas.

3. It;s not a secret that Apple is working on a vehicle program. Codenamed Project Titan. They have increased their R&D funding from $3 billion to $10 billion in the last four years and poached talent from leading automakers such as tesla.