As part of the GCV Advanced Materials Society we will pull together investment data on corporates investing in venture capital in the advanced materials sector and related areas, using our data product GCV Analytics.
In early efforts to track the sector, we have analysed all deals in the energy and industrial sector, as well as all corporate venturing units which are active in the sector. In future, we anticipate being able to drill down more specifically into the applied materials space. All analysis is based on data from the beginning of 2011 to the end of October.
As can be seen, typically we are tracking between 60 and 70 deals per year in the sector, (see deals in energy and industrial sector graph) and the majority of deals are C rounds or below. Unlike other sectors such as information technology there has not been a marked increased in energy and industrial deals in recent years. This may be in part because of hits to activity in the energy sector caused by the collapse in the price of oil.
Corporate venturing units from the energy and industrial sector are investing across the gamut of sectors, with deals classified by us as information technology taking an increased share of activity (energy and industrial firm deals).
Historically UK-based oil and gas company BP, largely through its unit BP Ventures, has been the most active investor in the energy and industrial sector, and it is also typically more active at later stage than many units. General Electric, largely through its unit GE Ventures, is the second most active unit in the energy and industrial sectors, and the most active energy and industrial group across the board. Industrial groups Siemens, Robert Bosch, Access industries and Sumitomo have also been active, as have oil and gas companies Total, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, and chemicals group BASF.
We have also attached the largest deals in the energy and industrial sectors, of which we treat clean-tech as sub-set.
As can be seen, deals by energy and industrial groups have risen most markedly in size at later stage during 2015, which echoes large amounts being invested at later stage across all of venture capital.
We will be looking to ramp up our data analysis as the society develops, and so do let us know what kinds of areas you would like us to explore.