Steve Brotman in Crunchbase News on why corporate venture capital is splitting in two

In a new op-ed for Crunchbase News, Alpha Partners Managing Partner Steve Brotman examines what last month's wind-down of PayPal Ventures - which came just weeks after Fidelity International closed its London-based venture unit - really signals about corporate venture capital. Two serious programs shutting down inside six weeks looks like a corporate retreat from venture, but the data tells a different story.

Measured in dollars, corporate venture has never been stronger. Corporate investors participated in 68 percent of global AI deal value in 2025, according to Bain, and Nvidia alone made more than 40 startup investments last year, appearing in 13 of the 20 largest AI financings. That strength is real, but it is concentrated. For Nvidia, Alphabet, Salesforce, and Cisco, startup investing is a core strategy funded off enormous balance sheets, because their businesses depend on owning a position in the technology cycle. For most other corporations, venture is one strategic priority among several, competing with the core business itself for capital.

"Size never protected either one, and the dividing line runs through the mandate," Brotman writes of the PayPal and Fidelity programs.

The consequences land first on smaller funds and the startups downstream. When a corporate arm winds down mid-life, portfolio companies lose a strategic backer and a source of follow-on capital at once, and the funds that syndicated alongside it lose their anchor for the next round. Silicon Valley Bank's State of CVC survey found corporate funds pursuing fewer, more targeted deals, with the share using the secondary market jumping from 15 percent in 2024 to 22 percent in 2025.

The lesson for fund managers and founders is to plan for corporate capital to come and go. Pro rata rights become most valuable at exactly the moment a strategic investor steps back and ownership in a breakout company opens up to whoever can fund it. Funds should line up committed follow-on capacity before their winners come back to market, and founders should know today which investors on their cap table can carry the next round.

At Alpha Partners, this is the problem we were built to solve. We provide the capital that lets our network of more than 1,000 early-stage VC partners exercise the pro rata rights in their best companies. We turn moments like these into opportunities to own more of the winners they backed first.

Corporate programs will keep opening and closing as they always have, but the funds and founders who plan for it will own more of the companies that matter.

Read the full article here.