Much as the world’s athletes impressed with their vigour in London’s Olympics this year, corporate venturing executives demonstrated their tenacity this summer with a marked spike in dealmaking in August.

Global Corporate Venturing tracked 103 investments in corporate venturing-backed companies in August worth $1.8bn, up significantly against the 81 deals worth $1.3bn in July.

It was also a more active month than the 82 deals in August last year, although in that month deal values reached $3.3bn, with the value then boosted by social network Twitter’s $800m round and daily deals website LivingSocial’s $600m round.

Exit activity was lacklustre, with eight exits worth $145m. This compared with four exits worth $416m in July and nine exits worth $597.5m in August last year.

The largest deal of the month was a quasi-corporate venturing deal, with China-based automobile parts maker Wanxiang investing $200m in equity in battery maker A123 Systems – this deal also involved debt and convertible loans, which could result in the total size of the investment rising to $450m and majority control.

The second-biggest deal was the $150m raised by India-based retailer Flipkart Online Services, in a round backed by MIH, the corporate venturing unit of South Africa-based media company Naspers, as well as the spin-out by Ireland-based pharmaceutical group Elan of its drug discovery business Neotope, in which it retained a 14% to 18% stake.

Liz Arrington, a partner at Bell Mason, said one of the most significant deals of the quarter was not the biggest deal. She said: “Although not the largest round at $60m, some say the valuation of noted Chinese So-Lo-Mo player Dianping could near $10bn, not to mention the strategic value created for global corporate investors. German incubators continue to produce scalable e-commerce and media ventures addressing global markets ex-US.”

Global destinations were the biggest beneficiaries of the increase in investment activity, with 64 deals in the US, traditionally the biggest market for corporate venturing, compared with 62 deals in July.

The month was particularly active in Japan, with eight deals compared with one in July. There were six deals in Germany and five investments in both India and the UK.

There was an uptick in the proportion of seed activity – 13% of deals, compared with 4% in July. This increase in market share for seed deals came largely at the expense of A and B deals which went down from 39% of transactions in July to 29% of transactions in August.

Sector activity was broadly similar to July (see graph for details and click here for Dow Jones’s quarterly venture tables).