The five most valuable technology companies have plenty of money to invest in startups. Both companies are in particularly strong positions right now, with their respective stock prices rising significantly over the past year.
Still, for the most part, the “big five” (Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet) were not excited about venture investing in 2024.
Last year, the five companies invested in a total of 149 known startup fundings of $1 million or more. 1 This is a slight increase compared to 2023, but is still the second lowest total in the past five years, as shown in the chart below.
Big help from AI
While the tech giant wasn’t a particularly prolific dealmaker in 2024, it participated in some very large funding rounds, primarily for artificial intelligence companies.
The largest of these was OpenAI’s $6.6 billion funding in October, which was led by Thrive Capital but also included Microsoft and Nvidia.
The next biggest is Alphabet, which led a $5.6 billion round in self-driving spinoff Waymo, followed by Amazon, which made a $4 billion investment in Anthropic in November.
While these are large rounds, they are all much smaller than Microsoft’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI, the major deal of 2023.
Alphabet leads in number of transactions, Apple lags behind
Among the Big 5, the most active venture investors last year were Google and its holding company Alphabet, with 87 known rounds. Besides Waymo, the company and its affiliated ventures’ largest lead rounds were for digital bank Monzo and data management platform Cribl.
The least active investor was Apple, which did not participate in the 2024 public round. The remaining three companies, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Amazon, were somewhere in the middle, as shown in the graph below.
Towards 2025
As we enter the new year, there are no clear signs that the Big 5 will be pulling back on startup investments.
On the contrary, there are many positive signs, including deep cash reserves and historically strong stock prices at some of the most highly regarded tech companies. Additionally, today’s technology industry leaders continue to be 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. Look at Apple. The company’s reluctance to participate in the startup funding scene has nothing to do with its ability to write big checks.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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