Billionaire Jack Ma led Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is in plans to invest $3 billion into Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Grab Holdings Inc., according to sources. It is facing tough rivalry with competitor, Gojek.

The Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba will acquire stake in Grab which is held by Uber Technologies Inc., one of the people said. The deal may give access to data on millions of users in eight countries, a growing delivery fleet as well as a stake in digital wallet and financial services.

Grab’s was last valued at $14 billion. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Anthony Tan said the company is facing its “single biggest crisis,” while co-founder Tan Hooi Ling warned in May of a “long winter.”. Uber currently holds a stake of $9 billion in rivals, including a 23.2% stake in Grab at the end of 2018.

Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group Corp. has used its position as a major shareholder to push Uber to unload stakes in Grab, Didi Chuxing of China and Russia’s Yandex. Uber said in April it would write down about $2 billion in those investments after the coronavirus pandemic upended the ride-hailing business.

It is speculated that SoftBank has pushed for a merger of Grab with Gojek. It is said that the negotiations are hampered by a hostile relationship between the two companies and the complexity of coordinating between so many investors.

Source: Bloomberg

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