According to Pitchbook’s data, the global VC deals reached a peak in 2015 – when 19,890 such transactions were tracked – and has been in decline since, going down to 17,607 in 2016 and 16,615 in 2017. By the end of the third quarter this year, the deal count stood at 11,122, which implies that by the end of December it may register a total count figure even lower than last year’s.
In the meantime, corporate-backed deal count stayed well above 2000 transactions mark since 2015 and even increased in 2017. As of the third quarter, GCV Analytics had already reported 2,105 corporate-backed funding rounds, which implies a possible further increase by the end of the year.
Unsurprisingly, looking at the same data on deal count percentage-wise, the share of corporate-backed rounds versus all VC rounds globally has gone up from 11% in 2015 to 15% in 2017 and 19% in 2018 (by the third quarter). This has been due to the decreasing number of VC rounds around the world overall, however.
The story of the dollar amounts in involved in these rounds, however, is slightly different. Data from both Pitchbook and GCV Analytics suggest that total capital deployed in corporate-backed rounds has been growing at similar pace along with total capital deployed in all venture rounds, as the following chart illustrates.
Percentage-wise, the dollar share of deals with corporates in syndicates began to grow in 2014, the same year total VC dollars began to rise (going up to $113bn, up from $72bn the previous year) to 40% and it hit 68% by the end 2017. This indubitably suggests that corporate venturers, while not necessarily doing or disclosing a lot higher number of deals, are increasingly involved in funding rounds of emerging companies with much higher valuations.
