February saw the announcement of yet another corporate venture fund, prompting CNBC reporter Jordan Novet to quip, “If your company has no corporate-venture arm, what is it even doing?” Novet’s comment came on the heels of MongoDB’s new fund (disclosure: I work for MongoDB), but the intentional irony strikes home because it comes on the heels of recent announcements from Databricks (December 2021) and Snowflake (November 2020), joining larger tech companies that launched their own venture funds years ago, including Salesforce (2017), Microsoft (2016), Google (2009), Red Hat (2000), and Intel (1991).
