Corporate venturing continued to grow in 2018 as well. In fact, it grew larger than in previous years. By the end of November 2018, the number of corporate-backed deals (2,556) had registered a 6% increase over last year’s count (2,419), while the dollar value had gone up 33% over the previous 2017’s figure – from $116bn to over $154bn. In comparison with 2011, when Global Corporate Venturing stared tracking deals – the number of rounds has increased three-fold (from 847 to 2,556) and total dollars in them have multiplied almost seven times.
Expectedly, the number of active corporates (defined as any corporate investor that has taken a minority stake in at least one deal for the given period) has been growing over the years as well – from 399 in 2011 to 1,466 by the end of November 2018. The majority of such corporate investors come from the three traditionally strong innovation geographies – the US, Asia Pacific and Europe, as the following bar chart illustrates.
Finally, the bubble chart below shows which technology areas – whether we understand them in the analysis as horizontals or verticals – have received the most attention in terms of largest number of corporate-backed deals and largest volume of total dollars committed in them. The two leading ones for 2018 were clearly payment technology and cryptocurrencies, indubitably fueled by the rise of blockchain, and pharmaceuticals.
Stay tuned for our upcoming “World of Corporate Venturing” report for detailed review of the 2018 annual data.