The Art of Corporate Venture

2025 was supposed to be the year many promising tech companies listed on public markets but volatility may limit IPOs.

Corporate investors have become pivotal players in VC markets around the globe, able to move markets. It’s now time to press our advantage.

From deciding which markets to go into, how many team members to send and whether it is worth taking an LP position in a local VC fund instead, here are six things to think about before opening an overseas office.

Some 37 corporate-backed startups were bought in February in sectors ranging from semiconductors and skincare to pharma and robots.

There were 42 corporate-backed startup funding rounds in China in February, up 27% from the previous month. Most of these were backed by Chinese tech giants such as Tencent and Baidu.

Investor interest in self-driving cars is booming again as commercial services have started operating. These are some of the opportunities that are emerging.

The volume of CVC deals jumped 31% from a year ago, while the return of large deals pushed up the value of funding rounds by 167%.

The number of corporate investors has tripled in the last decade and they are now part of one in every six startup funding rounds.

The new US Trump administration's policies will likely lead to far-reaching changes in health, defence, crypto, semiconductor and energy sectors.

From finding startup champions at the corporate parent to having a pot of money to test technologies, here are steps for building a successful portfolio development team.

Our pick of spinout technologies that are breaking new ground in plastics recycling, data storage, photonics, semiconductor materials and decoding the genome.