Corporates (including their CVC arms) are participating in 25% of deals into all startups globally. Corporates participate in private markets with various aims in mind, from investing in products that are complementary to their core business, to outsourcing their R&D efforts, or investing simply for the returns.
As more corporations see the benefits of investing, there has been an explosion in active corporate venture arms across all sectors. We used CB Insights data to plot the number of unique Corporate VCs that have made at least one investment in each year, finding that CVC growth is slightly outpacing growth in number of VC investors overall.
Active CVCs annually
Last year saw the number of active corporate VCs cross 300 for the first time. This represents a 15.5% year-over-year increase, and was more than double the number of corporate VCs active in 2011.
Active VCs
Corporate VCs represent a small proportion of the VC universe, accounting for less than 12% of the total number of active VCs in 2015.
Growth in the total number of active VC investors has continued in 2015, with 12.4% year-over-year growth (to be clear, CVCs are included in these overall numbers). There were 1100 more active VCs in 2015 compared to 2010, highlighting the growth in the diversity and number of VC participants.
Feature image credit: Gopal Vijayaraghavan, Flickr
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