Rethinking Venture Building: De-Risking Innovation for Corporates and VCs – 0100 Weekly Brief
Hello there!
This week, we’re looking at what’s really happening inside large companies and why venture building is moving back into the spotlight. Yes, many venture studios shut down in 2024. But that doesn’t mean the model failed. It means the market is learning how venture building works and who it’s really for.
That’s why now is the right moment to look at it from two sides of the ecosystem: the corporates building ventures and the venture funds backing them. For large companies, venture building has become a smart way to reduce risk early. Instead of betting on unproven science, they focus on validating technology first and leaving mainly commercial risk on the table.
As Axel Deniz, CEO of Bosch Business Innovation, shared with us recently, the power lies in designing everything upfront, the tech, the team, and even the market. That change turns venture building into a discipline that helps you create new businesses, not a moonshot experiment.
For venture funds, this works in a very similar way. Corporate-built ventures offer built-in diversification and access to startups that are already technologically proven. That means faster diligence, clearer defensibility, and lower early-stage failure rates.
This matters even more right now, as investors navigate AI and deep tech, areas where no single fund can know everything. Relying on corporates with deep technical expertise isn’t a weakness; it’s a competitive advantage.
Interest in venture building is returning.
While some companies are slowing down due to tighter budgets, more organizations are adopting venture building as part of their innovation strategies. CEOs are placing a higher priority on building new ventures inside their companies.
This is making venture building look less like a failed experiment and more like a strategic tool in the corporate playbook that we are finally learning how to use.
If you’ve made it this far and found this interesting, now join us for more data crunching below! 🤓
Why Venture Building Is Taking Off
A McKinsey survey of Forbes 500 companies from October 2024 shows that half of all CEOs rank new-business creation in their top three priorities. Even more, 90% say they already have at least one asset that could become a new business.
What’s interesting is that this focus hasn’t dropped, even though money is more expensive today. CEO interest in venture building is still close to pre-COVID levels, despite higher interest rates and tighter budgets.
This isn’t just talk: about two-thirds of CEOs expect to build new ventures in the next 12 months, more than those planning big moves like M&A, joint ventures, or major reorganizations.
CEOs show strong confidence in venture building as a near-term strategic move. About two-thirds expect their organizations to build new ventures in the next 12 months, a higher share than those expecting other major strategic actions like joint ventures, M&A, or organizational transformations.
So what’s driving this?
Companies aren’t stepping away from venture building; they’re getting more careful about how they do it. Some are slowing down because of real constraints. Limited capital is the main reason, followed by a tougher funding environment (36%) and pressure on margins in the core business (24%). But this doesn’t mean venture building is losing importance. It means companies want clearer paths to value.
For companies, venture building is a practical way to grow when other options feel risky or slow. Instead of betting big on acquisitions, they can build new businesses step by step, using assets they already own and testing ideas early.
For venture funds, this change creates more opportunity. Corporate-built ventures tend to come with stronger foundations, proven technologies and markets, and clearer use cases. That makes due diligence faster and early-stage risk lower. In a market where capital is tighter, this kind of quality matters more than ever.
The Global Footprint of Venture Studios
This is where the bigger picture comes into focus. While some venture studios closed in 2024, the model itself is far from disappearing.
Today, there are over 1,100 active venture studios worldwide, even after a wave of shutdowns in 2024. In 2024 alone, about 154 studios closed, marking the first time the total number declined. But that drop also highlights how fast the ecosystem had grown before that point.
By zooming out, we can see the whole picture and long-term trends. The total number of venture and startup studios has grown quickly over the past decade.
Earlier editions of the same reports show that by early 2023, there were around 877 studios, roughly double the number from just five years earlier. In other words, 2024 looks more like a correction than a collapse. This matters for both sides of the ecosystem we discussed earlier.
Geographically, the U.S. still leads with long-established studios that shaped the early model. Europe stands out for its stability, with higher survival rates among studios, likely supported by more structured funding and stronger corporate involvement. This aligns with what we’re seeing across the market: fewer bets, but better-built ones.
And the results speak for themselves. Companies started by venture studios have collectively attracted more than $70 billion in follow-on capital, meaning investment rounds after the initial studio creation. That shows the model doesn’t just produce startups, it produces ventures that later-stage investors are willing to back.
A New Era for Venture Studios
Corporate venture building is still a young discipline, but it’s growing fast. The data shows that more than two-thirds of all CVB programs were launched within the past six years, and 38% were created between 2022 and 2024 alone.
While corporate venturing takes many forms—CVC, accelerators, venture clienting—about 20% of Forbes 500 companies now practice venture building in some way, highlighting its rising influence across large organizations.
The same report finds that 43% of ventures are built to “spin in,” while only about a quarter say their most common path is a minority-share spinout. Another 19% typically spin out ventures but keep full or majority ownership. This structure gives companies flexibility while keeping control of strategic assets. At the same time, compensation models inside corporate venture building look very different from startup norms.
Only around 20% of corporate programs offer startup-style equity to founders, even though ventures set up as separate legal entities are the most likely to include equity pools. Many experts in the report argue that stronger equity incentives would help attract talent and motivate leaders building these internal startups.
De-Risking Deep Tech with Bosch’s Venture Builder
In our newest Impact Talks episode, Axel Deniz, CEO of Bosch Business Innovation, walks us through how Bosch is giving venture building a fresh start.
Axel shares his honest thoughts about why earlier attempts in the industry didn’t work, consultants trying to build “startups-as-a-service,” and corporate innovation labs that looked modern on the outside but were still too tied to internal politics.
Bosch is now taking a different approach.
Instead of starting from zero, they’re spinning out companies built on real IP, years of research, and proven technology. They remove most of the tech risk upfront, giving their ventures a head start that typical deep-tech founders rarely get.
He also talks about how Bosch is changing the way corporates, founders, and VCs work together. They choose the right technology, the right team, and even the right market before launching a venture, which he calls “venture–market fit.”
🌍 Across the Ecosystem | News & Useful Resources for You
We’re not the only ones rethinking old assumptions about how venture building works and what it can deliver. Across the innovation world, more leaders are questioning traditional models, exploring new ownership structures, and digging into why earlier attempts at corporate venture building struggled.
Here’s a spotlight on more resources and different perspectives from the venture-building world.
🗞️ News | European venture builder targets corporates to join $18m startup creation fund
Austrian venture builder Whataventure is launching a new €15m ($18m) fund designed specifically for corporates that want to build startups but don’t have the resources to run large internal programs.
Led by Matthias Hille, who previously built the venture unit at REHAU, the fund gives corporates access to a portfolio of 10 or more ventures instead of just one or two. Hille explains that most companies struggle to learn enough or gain real market insight when building only a couple of ventures in-house.
📄 Article | The way to win in corporate venturing: Serial building and AI
McKinsey’s newest survey shows that companies with experience in venture building are doubling down on it, even in a tough economic environment. Leaders who have built new ventures in the past five years are far more likely to make it a top priority, and almost half say their ventures now generate meaningful revenue.
AI is also emerging as a major driver of performance: companies using AI for more advanced activities, such as validating concepts or shaping go-to-market strategies, report revenues twice as large as basic users and four times as large as companies that don’t use AI at all.