The Art of Corporate Venture

The Google owner committed big money to Lyft and Airbnb as GV increased its late-stage deals, formed an AI fund called Gradient and exited from Snap and Cloudera in IPOs.

The telecommunications group raised almost $98bn for its Vision Fund and dominated the tech VC space in 2017.

The upper end continued to grow and corporates launched a raft of AI funds, as bike sharing, real estate, smart vehicles and urban farming drew capital.

Cloud storage firm Kingsoft Cloud raised $300 in a series D round, one of the largest rounds in the cloud tech space in 2017

What were the most important trends in 2017?

Sector focus: AI

The fashion e-commerce platform raised $165m in its latest funding round, which featured LVMH and Fidelity. This is one of the largest and latest rounds in the fashion space.

Adding Cell Design and Kite Pharma to its portfolio brings Gilead to the top table in probably the hottest area for advanced therapies and follows the playbook the company has used over the past few decades to expand.

The Alphabet-backed spaceflight operator has extended its latest round to $450m, indicating the continued investor interest in space technologies.