China's top taxi-hailing app Didi Kuaidi is reportedly going to raise at least 1.5 billion U.S. dollars.

The amount values Xiaoju Kuaizhi, the company which runs the app, at 12 billion to 15 billion U.S. dollars.

The money will help Didi Kuaidi bulk up as its U.S. rival Uber expands aggressively in China.

Uber is planning to invest more than one billion U.S. dollars in China this year.

Didi Kuaidi is backed by Chinese Internet giants Tencent and Alibaba.

It operates in 360 cities in China and has over 1.3 million drivers currently signed up.