The astonishing development of the private capital markets for fast-growing companies in the past five years is easy to record but only when put against public markets does the transformation in liquidity become apparent.
Last year GCV Analytics tracked 2,775 deals worth an estimated $180.17bn of total capital raised (see more in our annual review, the World of Corporate Venturing 2019, to be published at the Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation Summit at the end of the month).
While the number of deals was a notable increase on a year-on-year basis (14%) compared with the 2,427 transactions reported in 2017, the total value of corporate-backed VC rounds grew by 55%, reaching another record high. The number of deals has risen by 60% since 2014’s 1,732, while total value has almost quadrupled. A simple reason – the number of corporate venturers per given year has more than doubled, from 702 in 2014 to 1,591 in 2018, but the experienced, such as SoftBank, Tencent and Naspers, are doing even more.
This means that of all VC activity, corporate venturing’s share by volume has increased from 8%…
