In this article, we are going to list the 15 biggest VC companies in the world. You can skip our detailed discussion about the changing trends in the venture capital world and go directly to 5 Biggest VC Companies in the World.
Venture capitalists invest in promising startups that have a potential to grow and expand. The VC-backed companies get money from investors and funnel them into their products. Did you know that most of the innovative companies of today are funded by these VC firms? Facebook, Google, PayPal, eBay, Airbnb — all received money from VCs and returned exponential returns in a few years.
The VC industry has changed dramatically over the last few years. In the early ’80s, most VC companies heavily invested in the energy industry. In recent years, technologies such as IoT, blockchain, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI) have seen significant growth in popularity and innovation. As a result venture capitalists are pouring money into futuristic technologies like AI and IoT. Data shows that AI startups collected a whopping $9.3 billion from VCs in 2018 alone.
According to Tech Crunch, the global venture capital investment market size is currently valued at more than $300 billion. Surprisingly, 2020 has been a great year for startups and small companies despite the emergence of COVID-19. The growth of certain industries such as healthcare, business, finance, education, entertainment, and retail has been directly impacted but the pandemic also transformed these sectors. Online shopping and work-from-home trends created a boom for the tech industry, e-commerce, infrastructure, and could services companies.
According to a Pitchbook report, VC dealmaking was upbeat in 2020 with companies raising around $148 billion as of Dec. 14, 2020. Airbnb (NASDAQ:ABNB) and DoorDash (NYSE:DASH) were the two most valuable and important venture-backed companies that came to the public markets via IPOs in 2020. Airbnb went public at a valuation of $47 billion and as of today, it is trading at close to over $100 billion. DoorDash has gone public at $39 billion and is now more than 50% higher.
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To give you the most accurate ranking of the biggest VC companies in the world, we measured the Investment to Exit Ratio of each company. The higher the ratio, the better a VC firm is. An Investment to Exit Ratio of is 1 is bad as it shows a “no growth” scenario, meaning the VC is making one investment for every exit. When the ratio is above 1, the VC is a net acquirer of portfolio companies. We included the updated number of investments and the total number of all investments and exits of each company, sourced from CrunchBase. We have ranked the VC companies mainly on the basis of the Investment to Exit Ratio.
Let’s start our list of 15 biggest VC companies in the world.
15. Global Founders Capital
Number of Portfolio Investments in 2020: 90
Total Number of Investments: 448
Total Exits: 41
Investment to Exit Ratio: 9.15%
Headquarters: Berlin, Germany
Based in Berlin, Global Founders Capital was founded in 2013. It has been a global player in the VC industry, investing in companies operating in retail, fintech, internet, information technology, and communication sectors.
GFC’s portfolio includes a total fund amounting to $34.2 billion with a total of 8 IPOs with a valuation of $137.9 billion.
Image by aymane jdidi from Pixabay
