&gt; Maybe partly, but 1B USD seems a lot to pay for that.<p>Apple has at least $216B cash on hand as of 2016 [1] and majority of them are held overseas. $1B strategic investment with all said benefits sound like a VERY GOOD deal.<p>&gt; Self-driving is not going to happen in China the way it happens in the US. The roads are full of pedestrians, e-bikes, people breaking any sort of nominal rule or law... it&#x27;s too accident prone.<p>Probably not for a long time, yes. But I would argue that&#x27;s exactly why Didi&#x27;s data is MORE valuable for autonomous driving modeling to be based off. As Elon famously said[2] to George Hotz about his comma.ai demo, 99% of the self-driving is easy to do. The hard part is the 1% edge cases and billions and billions of data points for engineering validation. Apple has a very aggressive timeline for their self-driving EV, buying that massive amount data from a harsh environment serves that purpose REALLY REALLY well and it&#x27;s an efficient use of capital resources to achieve their goal in time.<p>&gt; Maybe partly.<p>And lastly, it&#x27;s hard to argue a ban on Apple when Apple can say to the government that hey we&#x27;ve investing $1B to grow millions of driver jobs and the local tech economy. It&#x27;s about jobs!<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.marketwatch.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;apple-isnt-really-sitting-on-216-billion-in-cash-2016-01-26" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.marketwatch.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;apple-isnt-really-sitting-o...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.teslamotors.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;correction-article-first-person-hack-iphone-built-self-driving-car" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.teslamotors.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;correction-article-first...</a>