The Big 5 Didn’t Binge On Startup Investments In 2024

The five most valuable tech companies have enough money to invest in new startups. Their position is particularly strong today, with both companies’ share prices rising significantly in the last year.

Even so, in most cases, the “Big Five” (apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon and letter) is not continuing its venture capital frenzy in 2024.

Last year, these five companies invested in a combined 149 known startup rounds of $1 million or more. 1 That’s up slightly from 2023, but still the second-lowest total in the past five years, as shown in the chart below.

AI helps a lot

While tech giants weren’t particularly prolific dealmakers in 2024, they did participate in some very large funding rounds, most of which were for artificial intelligence companies.

Among them, the largest is Open artificial intelligenceUS$6.6 billion in October Financing,Depend on Thrive Capital But also Microsoft and Nvidia.

Alphabet leads second-largest funding round – raising $5.6 billion for its self-driving spinoff WaymoThen there’s Amazon, which invested $4 billion in November Anthropic selection.

While these are big rounds, they’re still much smaller than the headline deal of 2023: Microsoft’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI.

In terms of deal count, Alphabet leads, Apple lags

Among the Big Five, Google Last year, Alphabet and its holding companies were by far the most active venture investors, with 87 known funding rounds. Outside of Waymo, the company and its affiliated venture capital firms’ largest lead round is in digital banking Monzo and data management platform cribble.

The least active investor is Apple, which did not participate in any public funding rounds in 2024.

Looking to 2025

As we start the new year, we see no clear signs of a reduction in investment from the Big Five.

Instead, there are plenty of positive signs, including ample cash reserves and historically strong stock prices for the most highly valued technology companies. Additionally, today’s tech industry leaders remain under pressure to stay at the forefront of AI innovation.

But of course, just because tech giants can invest in startups doesn’t mean they will. Just look at Apple. Its reluctance to participate in startup financing has nothing to do with its ability to write big checks.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman