The year also saw a surge in new corporate venture units. Some 46 companies launched investment arms in 2025, reversing the retrenchment of recent years. Many existing funds, including Woven Capital and Sanofi Ventures, increased their allocations.
Corporations are also increasingly taking LP stakes in external VC funds to get exposure to a larger number of startups and areas of specialist expertise, such as cybersecurity, sustainability and cryptocurrencies.
Corporate appetite for startup investing was bolstered by sharp growth in the returns achieved by exiting startup investments. More than 600 corporate-backed startups achieved liquidity events during the year, most through acquisitions. Exit value rose sharply — nearly quadrupling from $49.9bn to $196.3bn — reflecting a handful of large, high-quality outcomes.
IPOs remained scarce, particularly in the US, where the market turmoil of the early months of the Trump presidency pushed back the timing on many planned listings. India, however, saw a number corporate-backed companies achieve successful market debuts adding to the global total.
Startups that take money from corporate investors tend to fare better when it comes to exits. Corporate-backed startups have, in recent years, been more likely to achieve a liquidity event than startups without corporate investors, although they no longer achieve higher multiples in terms of returns.
Corporate-backed startups are also less likely to go bust than startups without corporate backers.
There was a small rise in the percentage of large corporate-backed startup funding rounds in 2025, with 10% of deals raising more than $100m. However, this is still far off the frenzy seen in the pandemic-era peak of 2021.
Corporations continue to be keen to invest at early stage, in seed and series A rounds, a trend which began in 2022. This reflects a need to move into earlier-stage investment as many corporate investors find themselves priced out of big, late-stage rounds. It may also be a sign of growing confidence by mature investment teams to take bets on less-proven startups with promising technologies.
The US retained its position as the world’s most active market for corporate venture investment. China followed — although readers should treat the large jump in Chinese startup funding activity in our chart with some caution as it partially reflects an improved data collection methodology adopted this year.
Japan, meanwhile, emerged as a standout growth market, buoyed by government incentives designed to encourage large companies to back startups. Most Japanese corporate funds remain modest in size, but a handful —such as Toyota’s Woven Capital and Hitachi Ventures —now manage more than $1bn each.
Taken together, the data suggest that corporate venture capital is no longer a cyclical sideshow. Even as traditional VC ebbs and flows, large companies are increasingly willing to write cheques of their own — both to secure strategic advantage and to ensure they are not left behind in the next technological wave.
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