Although corporate involvement at the seed and pre-IPO stages has dramatically increased, the actual number of active traditional VCs remains significantly greater than corporations.

There have been some reports that there are now more corporate VCs in the market than traditional venture firms. Using CB Insights data, we tested this by scanning active U.S. VC and corporate venture arms over the past four years.

The reality is that there are, in fact, significantly more pure-play VCs than corporate venture arms.  In fact, even if you included corporations making investments in startups who don’t have a separately delineated corporate venture unit, financial VCs still greatly outnumber corporate investors.

The data below.

The chart below compares the number of  U.S.-based venture capital investors that completed at least four deals vs. corporates since the start of 2010. While there have been an increasing number of active corporate investors over the period (38% growth between 2010 and 2013), the number of active VCs has also risen – driven by multi-stage investors doing more deals at the seed stage and the rising number of micro VCs.

activevc

Even if we change the definition of ‘active’ VC and corporate VC investors to those who make at least one investment per year, the number of VC investors still dominates corporates. In fact, 2013 saw 169% more U.S. VCs make an investment than corporates.

While the data dispels any paradigm shift in the VC vs. corporate venture ecosystem, the rise of corporates in VC is still notable whether at the seed-stage or the largest financings and into the billion-dollar valuation club.

activevc2

All of the underlying investor data used in this research brief is on the CB Insights Venture Capital Database.

  • Ben Levy

    I find that interesting and not surprising: Intel and Google Venture Arms are likely the most active investors out there including traditional VC firms. That being said, they are the exceptions and if you consider that historically, most Corporate Venture Groups treated their GPs as Employees, with little to no carry in the deals….you can understand why the best GPs would do set up shop themselves or join other established firms. Interestingly, lots of corporates have figured that out and are playing LPs in VC firms (therefore paying mgt fees and carry), which I find interesting when they are the ones with the cash at the first place. This could also be an good strategy to avoid the innovator’s dilemma. Keep the analysis comming CB Insights..one day we will share APIs with our own BootstrapRadar maybe ;)