Chinese ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing seems to be getting very serious about its global ambitions, after it slayed the American ride-sharing giant the Uber in Chinese market last year. Didi's soaring confidence is justified considering that acquiring Uber's China business was not a small achievement by any measure.

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The high flying ride sharing company on Thursday opened a new research and development centre - DiDi Labs - in Mountain View, California. What is so special about this R&D centre is that this is probably the first physical office that Didi has opened outside China.

The Chinese company's pivot project will work towards creating an intelligent transportation ecosystem that intends to take consumer's riding experience to a whole new level. The DiDi Labs will work in critical areas of cloud-based security, deep learning, human-machine interaction, computer vision and imaging.

The company has specifically stated that unlike scores of start-ups in Mountain View its lab won't focus on making driverless or self driving vehicles. Instead it will only focus on Artificial intelligence and how it can be leveraged for creating a superior riding experience, meaning that the lab won't just work on cyber security.     

The important thing to highlight here is that Didi is not pursuing this ambitious project all alone. It has collaborated with top five ride hailing companies, in which Didi apparently owns substantial stakes.  These companies are Uber's U.S. rival Lyft, Southeast Asian ride-hailing service Grab, India's Ola Cabs and Brazil's 99 services.

"As the world's leading mobility platform, DiDi has invested in five industry leaders around the world. Building on rich data and fast-evolving AI analytics, we will be working with cities and towns to build intelligent transportation ecosystems for the future," said Cheng Wei, founder, chairman and CEO of Didi Chuxing in a press statement.            

All the projects in Didi Labs will be supervised by Dr. Fengmin Gong, the vice president of the Didi Research Institute. Gong, who is a leading information security scientist, played a pivotal role in building this research centre after his firm, AssureSec, was acquired by Didi in September last year.

Another high profile hire of Didi Labs is Charlie Miller, who was senior engineer at Uber's autonomous driving division. Miller quit Uber after working on the self-driving project for nearly 18 months. Miller's cyber security skills came into prominence after he and his partner, Chris Valasek, hacked a Jeep and successfully identified number of security vulnerabilities in the vehicle.         

TagsDidi Chuxing, china, Uber, Didi Chuxing and Uber