Startup funding rounds involving corporate investors rise 20% by value

Greater market influence

The number of companies actively investing in startups has more than tripled in the past decade, with 2,344 corporate investors actively taking part in startup funding rounds in 2024. These corporate VC units are becoming more professionally run and are accounting for an increasingly large portion of startup funding activity.

Startup funding rounds involving a corporate investor rose 20% in value last year, to $133bn.

At the same time, our most recent GCV Keystone benchmarking survey shows that two years of investment market downturn is pushing many CVC units to focus more on servicing the more short-term strategic needs of their parent corporations.

There is a tension between these two trends that CVC investors will need to carefully navigate in the coming year.