China 2018 VC investment hits record high: report

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China's venture capital (VC) investment reached a record high in 2018 as a string of big deals led by tech giants drove up the market volume, a report showed.

VC investment totaled 70.5 billion U.S. dollars last year, surging 52.9 percent year-on-year, according to the latest quarterly analysis of VC trends by global audit and consultancy firm KPMG.

The overall number of deals in 2018 remained stable at 813, up slightly from 799 in 2017 and China dominated the Asia VC market. The record-high investment was largely due to increasing deal value such as the 14 billion U.S. dollars raised by fin-tech juggernaut Ant Financial.

In China, corporate VC is growing rapidly, and more companies have VC arms and they are actively looking for disruptive technologies that can enhance their core business, according to Philip Ng, partner and head of technology at KPMG China.

"AI for manufacturing defects detection, IoT sensors to monitor environmental factors, robots for customer interaction -- corporate investors are interested in anything that will enhance the user experience or help them innovate on products and services," he said.

The report expects that industries such as healthcare, life sciences, and education, as well as AI and other highly innovative technologies with broad applicability, will continue to attract significant funding in Asia in 2019.

Source(s): Xinhua News Agency