Chinese ride-hailing company Didi became a retail favorite on its first day of trading

• Didi has become a retail-investor favorite on its first day of trading, Fidelity data show.
• The stock topped retail buys in Exela Technologies and AMC Entertainment.
• Shares of the Chinese ride-hailing company surged as much as 28% during its IPO Wednesday.

Chinese ride-hailing company Didi has already become a retail-trader favorite in its first day on the public markets, Bloomberg first reported.

According to data from Fidelity, Didi shares ranked number one among retail traders Wednesday, while Exela Technologies, which has seen heightened interest from Reddit investors this week, was second, and well-known meme-stock AMC Entertainment was third.

Didi had more than 32,000 buy orders as of 3:15 p.m. in New York, compared to Exela and AMC, which each had about a third of that, the data showed.

Didi's debut is the second largest among Chinese companies, after e-commerce giant Alibaba's initial public offering in 2014. The shares soared as much as 28% in their first day of trading, giving Didi an approximate $86 billion valuation, Markets Insider reported.

The valuation makes Didi the second largest ride-hailing app in the world after Uber, which is valued at $93 billion.

Rumors about a potential IPO spread for several years before the company eventually filed its prospectus earlier this month, Fortune reported. Among Didi's largest shareholders are investment firm SoftBank, which has a 21.5% stake, Uber, which has a 12.8% stake, and Tencent, which has a 6.8% stake, Fortune said.