Good morning. Everyone in tech is talking about OpenAI’s astonishing $6.6 billion fundraise, which got me wondering: What’s the largest-ever round in tech?
Leave it to the fine folks at PitchBook, who helped us with our inaugural Unicorn List in the go-go days of 2015, to track such things. (Back to 2006, anyway.)
The answer as of last year? Didi Global. The Chinese ride-hailing company raised $5.5 billion in 2017—or $7.1 billion, adjusted for inflation—four years before its IPO.
Things haven’t been so rosy for the company since, but hey, don’t stop believin’, right? —Andrew Nusca
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