GCV Analytics has tracked over 2000 funding initiatives backed by corporate investors over the past seven years.
Those include newly launched venturing units of corporations, traditional VC funds with corporate limited partners (LPs), corporate-backed accelerators, incubators and other initiatives (e.g. innovation labs, co-working spaces etc.) One noticeable trend, as illustrated by the bar chart below, is the fact that the total number of such initiatives was steadily growing until 2016: from 141 in 2011 to 332 in 2016, representing an increase of over 100%.
Last year, went down to 274 last year. This is true also for the two largest and most important sub-categories – newly launched CVC units and VC funds with corporate LPs.
In terms of the total dollars in such initiatives, 2016 marked a record because of the nearly $100bn SoftBank Vision Fund and 2019 is set to break another one if the second Vision Fund reaches its $108bn goal. However, it is noteworthy that the total estimated capital raised during 2018 stood at $30.49bn, considerably higher than figures from years prior to 2016 but lower than the $43.75bn in 2017.
