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The five most-valuable technology companies have plenty of money to invest in startups. They鈥檙e in a particularly strong position today, with shares of each up sharply last year.

Even so, for the most part, the 鈥淏ig Five鈥� (, , , and ) did not go on a venture investment binge in 2024.

Altogether, the five companies invested in 149 known startup financings of $1 million or more last year. 1 That鈥檚 up a bit from 2023, but still the second-lowest total of the past five years, as charted below.

Big helping of AI

While they weren鈥檛 especially prolific dealmakers in 2024, tech giants did partake in some very large funding rounds, mostly for artificial intelligence companies.

Of those, the biggest was 鈥檚 $6.6 billion October , which was led by but also included Microsoft and Nvidia.

Alphabet led the next-largest 鈥� a $5.6 billion round for its autonomous driving spin-off ,聽 After that came Amazon, which made a $4 billion November investment in .

Although these are big rounds, they are all still much smaller than the headline deal of 2023: Microsoft鈥檚 $10 billion investment in OpenAI.

By deal count, Alphabet leads, Apple lags

Among the Big Five, and its holding company Alphabet were by far the most active venture investors last year, with 87 known rounds. Besides Waymo, the company and its affiliated venture firms鈥� largest lead rounds were for digital bank and data management platform .

The least active investor was Apple, which participated in no disclosed rounds in 2024. The other three 鈥� Nvidia, Microsoft and Amazon 鈥� were somewhere in the middle, as charted below.

Looking up for 2025

As we embark on a new year, we鈥檙e not seeing obvious indicators for a startup investment pullback by the Big Five.

To the contrary, there are a lot of positive signals, including flush cash reserves and historically strong stock prices at the most highly valued tech companies. Plus, pressure continues for today鈥檚 tech industry leaders to remain at the forefront of AI innovation.

But of course, just because tech giants can invest in startups doesn鈥檛 mean they will. Just look at Apple, whose reluctance to take part in the startup funding scene has nothing to do with its ability to write big checks.

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