(Yicai Global) Sept. 14 -- China's shared-bike firm U-bicycle has acquired tens of millions of dollars in its latest round of financing. It is the first time that U-bicycle has brought in overseas funds.

The latest investment came from a family foundation founded by Canadian-Welsh business magnate Terry Matthews, who is reputed as the "Canadian Bill Gates." A serial entrepreneur, he was listed as the richest Canadian over many years.

U-bicycle will leverage this investment fund for entry, expansion, and operation in overseas markets, with a view to quickly expanding its overseas presence, jiemian.com reported today.

The bulk of the latest financing will be used to implement U-bicycle's "U-Globalized" project. Unlike other bike sharing companies that only output bikes and operations to overseas markets, U-bicycle may join hands with Canadian technical teams to set up technical research and development (R &D) centers overseas for joint R & D in the fields of the Internet of Things (IOT), artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data construction.

U-bike will also explore overseas markets, set up artificial databases to record local residents' biking data, and complete its big database construction in sync with the construction of a whole IOT, thereby laying a solid foundation for its presence in overseas markets and establishing an internationalized technical team, said Yu Yi, CEO of U-bicycle.

U-bicycle, affiliated to Shanghai Yaolu Information Technology Co, was founded in July 2016 and currently provides green bicycles in 17 Chinese cities.