SoftBank, Tencent backs China’s Full Truck Alliance’s US$1.7b raise

The Vision Fund, Sequoia, Fidelity International, and Permira led the round of funding, which valued the Guizhou-based company at around US$12 billion post-money, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Other investors in the round include Jack Ma’s Yunfeng Capital, Hillhouse, GGV, Lightspeed, All-Stars Investment, and Baillie Gifford.

Full Truck Alliance, known as Manbang in China, said it plans to use the new capital to expand into same-city deliveries, deepening its product offerings.

The company was formed by a merger between Huochebang and Yunmanman, two of China’s largest truck-sharing platforms. Sometimes called the Uber for trucks, the company recently claimed it broke even in 2020, handling transactions for around 10 million truckers and 5 million shippers.

“We broke even both in the accounting and cash flow sense,” said Full Truck Alliance Chief Financial Officer Richard Zhang in a recent interview with Bloomberg TV. “I don’t want to commit to a timetable here, but eventually we probably want to go for an IPO.”

In 2018, Full Truck Alliance raised US$1.9 billion at a valuation of about US$6 billion, attracting investments from companies such as CapitalG, the independent growth fund of Google’s parent firm Alphabet.