
He pushed Uber out of China. Then he got too big for Beijing
CNN
Cheng Wei built a world-class ride-hailing app that not even Uber could keep up with in China.
But Didi's risky play for expansion and dominance — culminating in a disastrous IPO this summer — has caused it to run afoul of Beijing. And now, the company's top executive faces a difficult balancing act: placating regulators at home and investors abroad, while fending off fierce competition.
Cheng, 38, who also goes by Will Cheng, is the youngest entrepreneur heading one of China's biggest tech firms. He's been busy in the nine years since Didi was founded: Cheng has knocked out a flurry of powerful opponents and amassed nearly 160 million monthly active users by the first quarter of this year in China alone, nearly double the amount of users that Uber has worldwide.