As corporate venture capital approaches the 10th Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation Summit in Monterey, it does so at a meaningful inflection point. A decade of community building, professionalization, and hard-earned lessons now gives way to a new chapter, one defined not only by resilience, but by earned credibility and superior value creation.
The latest Global Corporate Venturing survey confirms that CVC enters 2026 on solid footing. The number of active corporate investors has reached a record 3,068 globally, surpassing even the 2021 peak, with 46 new CVC units launched in 2025, up from 32 the year before. At a time when overall VC investment is declining, corporate-backed funding rounds and disclosed deal value continue to rise, reinforcing the role of CVC as a long-term, countercyclical force in the innovation economy.
Several trends stand out: 34% of CVC-backed rounds now take place at seed stage, a pattern that has held since 2022. This reflects a growing confidence in engaging earlier, partnering longer and helping shape markets before they fully crystallise. At the other end of the spectrum, AI accounts for 26% of total deal value while representing only 7% of deal volume, signaling a shift toward focused, conviction-led investments rather than volume-driven activity.
Geographically, Asia has remained the most active region for CVC since 2019, underscoring the importance of globally connected, industrially anchored investors. At the same time, the data reminds us of what most CVCs actually look like: more than half manage less than $100m and make six or fewer investments per year. Scale alone is not the differentiator. Quality of execution is.
That execution is becoming more sophisticated: board and observer participation is now the norm. More than half of CVCs hold LP positions in other funds and nearly a quarter actively use the secondary market. Most encouragingly, 47% of CVC units report that at least half of their portfolio companies have active commercial engagement with the parent company. This attach rate reflects something deeper: the emergence of CVC’s unique, built-in superpowers. No other investor can combine patient capital with technical depth, global manufacturing, regulatory insight, customer access and the ability to scale real-world impact.
Looking ahead, the next 10 years will be defined by how deliberately we use those superpowers. Serving entrepreneurs demands speed, clarity and founder-grade decision-making. Serving the corporate mothership requires strategic fluency, internal trust and the courage to prioritise long-term advantage over short-term optics. Serving co-investors and stakeholders requires consistency, governance and transparency across cycles.
This is why the bar must rise even higher. Training, shared standards and practical certification are no longer optional. Nor is the ability for CVCs to self-assess against best practices: strategic alignment, incentive design, decision velocity, post-investment engagement and ethical equal-win partnership. These capabilities will determine which CVCs merely participate in the ecosystem and which become indispensable to it.
Corporate venture has proven it can endure volatility. The decade ahead is about proving something more powerful: that when done well, CVC delivers a form of partnership and value creation that no other actor in the innovation system can replicate. If we get this right, 2026 will not just mark another year of progress, but the beginning of CVC’s most impactful chapter yet.
As we gather in Monterey for the 10th Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation Summit, this moment invites us to look beyond cycles and headlines and commit, collectively, to making the next 10 years the era in which corporate venture fully delivers on its distinctive promise to founders, corporations and society alike.
GCV provides the global corporate venturing community and their ecosystem partners with the information, insights and access needed to drive impactful open innovation. Across our three services - News & Analysis, Community & Events, and the GCV Institute - we create a network-rich environment for global innovation and capital to meet and thrive. At the heart of our community sits the GCV Leadership Society, providing privileged access to all our services and resources.
