Didi Chuxing, China’s largest ride-hailing company, has made no secret of its admiration for Apple. The company’s official name, Xiao Ju Keji, which means Little Orange Technology, is a reference to the US technology group. Visitors to Didi’s campus in Beijing are told how Cheng Wei, its founder, was looking at the logo on an Apple store and thought, “If I can’t be an apple, I can be an orange”.

That admiration seems to be working in both directions: Apple invested $1bn in Didi last week, its biggest minority investment ever.

The deal is not a huge outlay for a company that has net cash of $153bn but it is an unusual move given that Apple has previously shied away from using its cash to invest in start-ups. Unlike other big tech companies, such as Google and Intel, which have active venture arms, Apple has a longstanding tradition of incubating new ideas in-house.