There were 504 corporate venturing investments worth $11.9bn in a busy third quarter. The busy deal period, which compared with 456 investments worth $14bn in the second quarter, ensured 2014 has already become the most active period in corporate venturing by number of investments and value of investments since Global Corporate Venturing began tracking the industry in 2010. It is likely the corporate venturing industry has never seen such dramatic levels of activity, although comparable data for the 1990s, when corporate venturing also boomed, is limited. See quarterly deal activity and the third quarter in graphics.
Global Corporate Venturing also tracked 15 exits and 11 initial public offerings during the third quarter, worth $31bn. Exit activity was especially notable by value because of the $25bn initial public offering of China-based e-commerce company Alibaba, the largest flotation in history.
Mail.ru Group, a London Stock Exchange-listed Russian internet giant, bought Vkontakte (VK.com), a leading Russian language social network with more than 250 million registered accounts and 60 million daily users. The group, which already owned 52% of the company, bought the remaining 48% stake from UCP, a Russia-based investment fund that became a VK shareholder in April last year. The all-cash transaction amounted to $1.47bn.
E-commerce company Amazon acquired US-based Twitch, a social video platform for gamers backed by investors including Take-Two Interactive Software, in a cash deal worth $970m.
The largest investment was India-based e-commerce company Flipkart raising $1bn in the biggest round so far raised by an India-based company or an e-commerce business.
Corporate-backed internet incubator and venture firm Rocket Internet received two large investments, securing €435m ($580m) from internet services provider United Internet, and telecoms company PLDT, which paid $446m for another stake.
US-based relationship intelligence platform RelateIQ is set to be acquired by cloud computing company Salesforce in a deal worth about $390m.
Delivery Hero, the Germany-based online food ordering platform backed by investors including retail groupTengelmann, raised $350m in a series G round.
This is a shorter-than-usual version of our quarterly data report, as Global Corporate Venturing is focusing on preparing a bumper World of Corporate Venturing 2015 supplement in January, providing our most sweeping data analysis yet. Contribute to a related survey here:
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