The customer relationship management software producer launched four specialist funds with $250m of capital and scored big on the IPO exit front.

Tencent added huge private equity deals to investments in the likes of Meituan-Dianping, Go-Jek and Flipkart before a run of huge IPOs late in the year.

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.

Investments in driverless cars and virtual reality pointed the way to the future while machine learning folded into AI and the insurtech sector came of age.

2016 saw some big changes at the top of some of the biggest CVC units; some corporates raised huge funds and others got into the game, though the IPO market slowed to a crawl.

Intel Capital modified its investment structure in 2016 and pledged to cut its portfolio by around 25% in the next five or six years while increasing its investment sizes.