This is our data snapshot based on last month’s investment activity. 
The charts and tables have been generated by our data platform GCV Analytics.

The number of corporate-backed rounds reported in November was 231, up slightly from the 228 deals tracked in the same month last year. Investment value also increased significantly to $19.72bn – up 105% from $9.61bn in November 2017. However, compared with other months of this year, November fared less well than the third quarter. Despite that, November follows the overall upward trend for corporate-backed deals throughout much of this year, with record numbers for most months. Most corporate-backed deals, as usual, involved the US with 95 rounds, China was second with 34, the UK third with 19 and India fourth with 11. The leading corporate investors by number of deals were telecoms group SoftBank, semiconductor manufacturer Intel, e-commerce firm Alibaba and diversified conglomerate Alphabet. In terms of involvement in the largest deals, SoftBank topped this ranking as well, along with Alibaba and its financial services affiliate Ant Financial. GCV Analytics reported 29 corporate-backed funding initiatives in November, including VC funds, new venturing units, incubators, accelerators and others. This is a slight increase compared with October, when there were 23 such initiatives. The estimated capital raised last month amounted to $4.21bn, considerably lower than the impressive $46.91bn in October – $45bn of which committed to the second SoftBank Vision Fund. Deals Emerging businesses from the IT, financial, health, services and consumer sectors raised the largest number of deals during November. The most active corporate venturers came from the financial services, IT, media, and consumer sectors, as shown on the heatmap. Five of the top 10 deals wereabove $1bn and, notably, SoftBank was involved in all of them.Set featured image Ele.me and Koubei, the recently merged local services subsidiaries of group Alibaba, raised $4bn at a $30bn valuation from investors including SoftBank. The latter provided funding through the SoftBank Vision Fund, joining Alibaba and its affiliate Ant Financial as well as private equity group Primavera Capital. The capital was provided to support the merger of Ele.me, a portfolio company Alibaba fully acquired at a $9.5bn valuation, and Koubei, an Alibaba spinoff that had secured $1.1bn from investors. The merged company will provide mobile users with access to a wide range of local services including retail, food delivery, travel and accommodation. Food delivery and restaurant listings specialist Ele.me claims to serve more than 167 million users and both companies claim to have jointly linked more than 3.5 million merchants. The SoftBank Vision Fund agreed to invest another $3bn in US-based workspace provider WeWork,…

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