The five most precious tech corporations have loads of money to take a position in startups. They’re in a particularly strong position today, with their shares skyrocketing in the last yr.
Still, for the most part, the “Big Five” (Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon AND Alphabet) didn’t engage in enterprise investments in 2024.
In total, the five corporations invested in 149 high-profile startups value at least $1 million last yr. 1 This is barely higher than in 2023, but is still the second lowest in five years, as shown below.
Big AI help
While they have not been particularly prolific in terms of deals in 2024, tech giants have participated in some very large funding rounds, mostly for artificial intelligence corporations.
Of these he was the largest OpenAIin October it’ll be $6.6 billion financingwhich he led Develop capital but it also included Microsoft and Nvidia.
Alphabet led the next largest round – value $5.6 billion – of an autonomous vehicle spin-off WaymoThen got here Amazon, which invested $4 billion in November Anthropic.
While these are large rounds, they are all still much smaller than the primary deal from 2023: Microsoft’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI.
Alphabet leads by transaction count, Apple lags behind
Among the Big Five, Google and its holding company Alphabet were by far the most lively enterprise investors last yr, with 87 known rounds. Apart from Waymo, the largest lead rounds for the company and its affiliated enterprise firms were for the digital bank Monzo and data management platform crib.
The least lively investor was Apple, which participated in undisclosed rounds in 2024. The remaining three – Nvidia, Microsoft and Amazon – fell somewhere in the middle, as shown below.
Looking to 2025
As we enter the recent yr, we see no obvious indicators of the Big Five disinvesting in startups.
On the contrary, there are many positive signs, including large money reserves and historically high share prices of the most valued technology corporations. Moreover, today’s technology industry leaders are under pressure to stay at the forefront of AI innovation.
But in fact, just because tech giants can invest in startups does not imply they may. Just look at Apple, whose reluctance to enter the startup financing scene has nothing to do with its ability to write down big checks.