Corporate Venture Capital is a beast.

Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) has become one of the most valuable platforms for startups in the last decade – dedicated teams, with good budgets, directly seeking game-changing ideas.

Here at Plug and Play, we're at the forefront of witnessing how powerful corporate VCs can be in a startup's journey – as well as the explosive growth that the phenomena has gone through.

In the first half of 2016 alone, 53 brand new CVC units have made their first investments and those deals tend to be larger and more strategic for the startups concerned.

Diving a little deeper into that fact, and in H1 2016, CVCs were involved in $8.6 billion of US-based startup investments.

Corporate Venture Capital is a fickle beast.

Despite the rise in popularity for CVC, 2016 has seen the biggest slowdown in nine quarters. This retention is something to look out for, but could simply be a market-wide reevaluation of goals, a deeper understanding of long-term investment potential, or political uncertainty.

Source: CB Insights

The thing is, CVC might be slowing in the US, but in Europe, things are really taking flight.

Source: CB Insights

And since 2012, the entire CVC market has grown by more than 50%:

Source: CB Insights

Who are the most active Corporate VCs in H1 2016?

1. Google Ventures

2. Intel Capital

3. Comcast Ventures

4. Salesforce Ventures

5. Cisco Investments

6. GE Ventures

7. Qualcomm Ventures

7. Pfizer Venture Investments

9. Bloomberg Beta

9. CyberAgent Ventures