Didi Global Inc.’s stock rose slightly on the first day of trading after its IPO, with investors weighing the prospects of the Beijing-based ride-sharing company as it jumped into a hot market for initial public offerings.

Didi’s American depositary shares opened trading at $16.65 on Wednesday afternoon, 19% above their $14 IPO price. But the rally faded into the afternoon, and the stock closed up 1% at $14.14. The company ended the day with a market capitalization of roughly $68 billion.

Still, the gains bucked the trend of poor performance that has plagued several other Chinese companies’ IPOs in recent weeks, signaling that investors are willing to overlook some risks for the promise of high growth, and that Didi and its underwriters were wise in conservatively pricing the deal.

Didi raised about $4.4 billion in its initial public offering Tuesday after pricing shares at $14 apiece, making it the biggest IPO haul for a Chinese company since Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. listed shares in 2014, according to Dealogic. Some people around Didi’s deal had originally floated the possibility of raising roughly $5 billion to $10 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter, but scaled back due to recent poor performance by Chinese IPOs and the high volume of U.S.-listed IPOs marketing shares to investors right now.

This summer has been an unusually busy season for U.S.-listed IPOs, with bankers, lawyers and investors saying more money is likely to be raised by companies in June, July and August than ever before during that period. So far this week, 11 companies, not including blank-check companies, have raised more than $7.7 billion in their IPOs, making it the biggest week of the year as measured by money raised, according to Dealogic.

Overall, traditional IPOs in the U.S. have raised more than $80 billion in 2021 through Tuesday, on track for the biggest year on record, Dealogic data show.

Heading into 2021, investors eagerly anticipated Didi’s IPO because of the promise of big growth in ride hailing in China, a highly urbanized country with low car ownership in city centers. In regulatory filings ahead of the IPO, Didi revealed that its business wavered in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic led to quarantines, travel restrictions and limitations on public gatherings. For the full year 2020, the company posted revenue of 141.74 billion Chinese yuan, equivalent to $21.63 billion, down 8.4% from a year earlier.

Despite this slowdown, in the first three months of 2021, Didi posted a profit of 196 million yuan, or about $30 million. In 2020, it posted a net loss of 10.68 billion yuan, equivalent to $1.63 billion.

On Thursday, Didi joined more than a half dozen other companies in their U.S. trading debuts. U.S. Cybersecurity software company SentinelOne Inc. raised more than $1 billion in its IPO after pricing above expectations. Identity-verification platform Clear Secure Inc. and online legal services company LegalZoom Inc. also priced their shares above expectations. SentinelOne, Clear Secure and LegalZoom shares all closed well above their IPO prices.

Write to Corrie Driebusch at corrie.driebusch@wsj.com