First Data, Simon Property Group, Ping An Insurance, and Wipro are just a few of the large corporations globally that recently launched venture units to invest in startups. And they’re far from alone.
In the first 8 months of 2015, more than 50 corporate VCs have already made their first investment, including Twitter Ventures and Workday Ventures, according to CB Insights data. That puts 2015 on pace to overtake 2014, when 70 new corporate VC units globally made their first investment.
The chart below shows the annual growth since 2009 of corporate venture groups by year of first investment. 2014 saw 28% year-over-year growth and 208% growth from 2010’s figure.
U.S. corporations make up nearly half of new CVCs since 2014
Breaking down the corporate VC groups that made their first investment since the start of last year, we see that 45% of the firms were made up of US-headquartered corporates. Japan- and Germany-headquartered companies rounded out the top three, with new CVCs including Line Ventures and Dentsu Ventures in Japan, and Bauer Ventures and CommerzVentures, among others, in Germany.
New corporate venture groups are coming from a wide range of industries from finance to media to telecom to healthcare. The graphic below highlights a selection of the corporations with new corporate venture units formed in the past two years.
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