World of Corporate Venturing 2026: Global trends

Corporate investment in startups reached a new high in 2025, even as the broader venture capital market continued to cool. More than 3,000 corporations made at least one investment in an early-stage company during the year—more than at the peak of the pandemic-era boom in 2021. 

In total, corporate investors took part in 5,221 startup funding rounds, up 30% on 2024. The value of those deals rose even faster, climbing 75% to $233.8bn. By contrast, overall venture capital activity remained subdued. The number of VC-backed funding rounds fell from 30,163 in 2024 to 25,227 in 2025, according to PitchBook, even as the total value of deals edged up to $422.9bn. 

It is worth noting that PitchBook’s data may still be subject to revision, even after the year end. But the implication is clear: Corporate investors play an increasingly important role in propping up the global startup ecosystem. Around one in five startup funding rounds now involves a corporate backer, a proportion that continues to rise. More than half of the dollars invested in startups came from funding rounds that included a corporate backer.  

As in recent years, artificial intelligence dominated corporate investment activity. Nvidia, already the world’s most valuable company, became one of the most prolific corporate investors, backing more than 80 startups during the year. Among the largest rounds were a $2.3bn raise for the AI coding platform Cursor and a $2bn financing for Safe Superintelligence, founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. 

Meta, traditionally a reluctant corporate investor, also made its presence felt. It was behind two of the biggest transactions of the year: a $14.3bn investment in Scale AI and a $10bn investment in Databricks. 

Although pure-play AI-related deals accounted for just 7% of all corporate-backed rounds, they absorbed 41% of total capital deployed. In other words, fewer deals but far larger cheques. 

Strip out AI and the picture remains robust. Corporate investment increased across a range of sectors, both in deal count and total value. 

Healthcare saw renewed interest as pharmaceutical companies returned to venture investing after a period of caution. French pharmaceutical company Sanofi, for example, added $625m to its venture arm, bringing its total capital under management to $1.4bn. This followed a number of successful exits for the unit from previous investments. Sanofi Ventures managing director Jason P Hafler told GCV last year that the drugmaker is seeking to increase investments in startups developing AI-assisted drug discovery.    

At the same time, healthcare startups continue to receive investment from Alphabet, the parent company of Google, which made some 32 investments in healthcare-related startups in 2025, through its various investment vehicles: GV, Capital G and Gradient Ventures. Nvidia, too, made several investments in healthcare startups, taking part in six funding rounds, predominantly those at the top end in terms of valuation.  

Financial services also benefited from renewed corporate interest, particularly in crypto and digital assets, helped by a more permissive regulatory environment in the US. One notable deal was US cryptocurrency exchange Kraken’s $800m fundraising from mainstream Wall Street investors including Citadel Securities and Jane Street. 

Industrial technology attracted growing attention, too. Robotics and so-called “embodied AI” featured prominently, with Figure AI raising a $1bn round backed by Nvidia and Intel Capital. Defence and aerospace startups also gained momentum, with Germany’s Helsing raising $691m amid heightened geopolitical tensions.