BATJ has been making frequent moves. Have the tech giants really made a comeback?

Recently, the frequent moves of Internet giants have attracted wide attention in the market. First, JD made a series of investments, putting money into six embodied intelligence companies. Subsequently, Alibaba funded the Infinite Fund SEE Fund. Recently, Tencent, in partnership with JD, PAG, etc., established a partnership with a scale of over 22 billion yuan, targeting Wanda.

These phenomena seem to indicate that Internet giants are making a comeback in the primary market.

Data from CVSource shows that in terms of minority equity investments, compared with the data in 2024, the investments of Internet giants have rebounded, and many companies have made more investments than the same period last year. However, judging from the overall quantity and growth rate, it may be too early to say that they are "returning."

Let's first look at the data on minority equity investments.

We conducted statistics on seven Internet companies, including Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Ant Group, JD, Meituan, and ByteDance. As of July 30, the seven leading Internet companies have made a total of 58 minority equity investments this year, an 18.4% increase from 49 in the same period in 2024. Generally speaking, it seems to be more promising than last year.

If we look at each company specifically, Baidu (including Baidu Ventures, Baidu (China), and Baidu Online) made 14 investments, Tencent made 12, Ant Group made 11, Meituan (including Meituan Longzhu and Meituan Strategic Investment) made 9, JD (including JD Strategic Investment and JD Cloud) made 6, Alibaba made 5, and ByteDance (excluding the 8 investments of Jinqiu Fund) made 1 (see the figure below).

Compared with the same period last year, only Ant Group and JD showed a significant increase. Ant Group increased from 5 transactions last year to 11 in the same period this year, doubling the number. JD increased from 2 to 6 in the same period this year, a three - fold increase.

More notably, JD's 6 investments are the highest since 2021, and Ant Group's 11 investments so far this year are already equal to the total number of investments in 2024. Meituan's 9 investments and Baidu's 14 investments this year are also very close to their total number of investments in 2024. Considering the popularity of the technology sector, it should not be too difficult to exceed the number of investments in 2024.

However, even though many companies have increased their investments, the number is only stable at around 10, which is significantly different from the "comeback of giants" expected by the market. If we extend the timeline, we can intuitively feel the downward curve of this "gap."

It is not difficult to see from the above charts that 2018 was the first investment peak for Internet giants. After 2018, it started to decline, and a second peak was formed in 2021. However, since 2021, the downward trend has intensified. Compared with 2018 or 2021, the investment data in 2024 was less than one - tenth of the peak at its lowest.

Even if the number of investments of many Internet companies is expected to exceed that in 2024 this year, it is difficult to describe the situation as a "comeback."

Of course, there are positive changes in the market: the development of the AI and robotics industries has attracted the funds of giants. Data shows that more than 60% of the investments of Internet giants are in the artificial intelligence and robotics industries.

As of July 30 this year, Internet giants have made a total of 36 investments in the artificial intelligence and robotics industries, far exceeding 15 in the same period last year and even exceeding the 33 investments last year. From this perspective, it may not be difficult to understand why there is an argument in the market that artificial intelligence has revived the strategic investments of Internet giants.

Among them, the number of investments of Baidu, Alibaba, and JD in the robotics and artificial intelligence fields this year accounts for more than 80% of the total number of investments. The proportion of Ant and Meituan's investments in these two sectors also exceeds 60% this year. Although Tencent has only made two investments in these two sectors this year, it started to invest in leading companies in these two sectors in 2024, with an estimated investment of about 1 billion yuan in companies such as Darkside of the Moon, Zhipu AI, Unitree Robotics, Jieyue Xingchen, and Red Butterfly.

In particular, JD, which has been quiet for more than three years, made crazy investments in six robotics companies between May and August this year, with an estimated total investment of at least 300 million yuan.

On July 21, JD led a 200 - million - yuan investment in the 1 - billion - yuan Series A1 round of Zhongqing Robotics; on the same day, JD strategically led the investment in Zhujidongli and also led the 600 - million - yuan Pre - A+ round of Qianxun Intelligence, focusing on the VLA large - model; on July 22, JD led the Series A+ round of Pasini; on July 30, JD made an angel - round investment of nearly 100 million yuan in Jike Future, laying out the hardware - software integrated intelligent module. This series of investments laid out the body, cerebellum, touch, and modules of robots at once.

However, it is worth noting that although there has been a significant increase in the number of investment events in the AI and robotics fields, the investment amount of large companies has not increased but decreased.

According to the statistics of the disclosed transaction amounts, the seven Internet companies have invested about 203 million yuan in the artificial intelligence and robotics industries this year, far lower than about 904 million yuan in the same period last year.

This phenomenon may be caused by two factors. First, many investments did not disclose the specific investment amount, resulting in differences in the statistics of investment amounts between last year and this year. Second, Internet giants have shifted from the concentrated competition for star projects such as Darkside of the Moon, Zhipu AI, and Unitree Robotics in 2024 to a more diversified investment strategy of betting on multiple startup projects.

So overall, compared with 2024, the minority equity investments of Internet giants have recovered to some extent. This is driven by the current booming AI and embodied intelligence industries. However, in the long run, the situation has not fundamentally reversed. It is not difficult to understand that the primary market is currently at the bottom, and it will take some time to regain its popularity. Naturally, the comeback of giants is also slower than we expected.

This article is from the WeChat public account "Beyond the J Curve," author: Song Zixiang. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.