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Uber burned $52 million per week in China on price subsidies during the competitive battle with Didi.

Macdonald recounts the intense competition in China where Uber was burning $52 million per week on price subsidies just to compete, while also being unable to operate on WeChat due to geopolitical and investor dynamics. ✦ AI generated

Andrew Macdonald · 20VC · 2026-08-17 · original ↗

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starts at this moment · 30:13

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“Do you have a crazy story? Like story time for the girls.”

All that is to say, I remember the last few weeks in the negotiation, we were burning 52 million a week in China just on price subsidies because there was this heated behind the scenes battle happening to get to the best economics in the ultimate sort of surrender or ultimate sort of truce. Um, so that was crazy. Another story I heard which I thought was nuts, and this was not a Uber story. But, you know, before like when when Uber and Didi did our deal, um, we were the two largest players. But before there was a third player, I think it was called Kuaidi, and Didi and Kuaidi merged. Um, and they sort of merged the companies, they did a deal, you're combining HR systems, and they realized that like of like the 2,000 employees here and the 2,000 employees here, there were like 200 employees that were on both payrolls.

verbatim transcript · starts at 30:13

Transcript · around this moment

30:13market as well. And you know, >> You you remember those days. Like that was free money era. And Uber was best in the world at at capitalizing the free money era, but there were many others that were good at it as well and ran the same play because of us. So, all that is to say, I remember the last few weeks in the negotiation, we were burning 52 million a week in

30:34China just on price subsidies because there was this heated behind the scenes battle happening to get to the best economics in the ultimate sort of surrender or ultimate sort of truce. Um, so that was crazy. Another story I heard which I thought was nuts, and this was not a Uber story. But, you know, before like when when Uber and Didi did our deal, um, we were the two largest players. But

31:01before there was a third player, I think it was called Kuaidi, and Didi and Kuaidi merged. Um, and they sort of merged the companies, they did a deal, you're combining HR systems, and they realized that like of like the 2,000 employees here and the 2,000 employees here, there were like 200 employees that were on both payrolls. And so you sort of have this dynamic where you sort of like realize like, oh,

31:28okay, like, you know, this this is this is this is like real like deep competitive gnarly like you have employees that are wearing both hats, which was crazy to me to hear because that notion just in like competing in the US, it just it's not something that I in a million years I could see happening. >> It was like a frontier AI >> lab lab employee wild. And so there was all sorts of

31:50stuff like that. I mean, remember, like we were we were competing in China with one hand tied behind our back. We we because of the nature of the sort of in investor bases in each company, um, you know, at one point we were not able to operate on the WeChat platform. That like trying to compete in China and not having access to WeChat, you know, it's like trying to compete in the US

▦ Didi▦ Kuaidi▦ WeChat◉ Travis Kalanick
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