Why Google Has Invested $1.5 Billion In Crypto-Focused Companies

According to a report from research firm Blockdata, Google’s parent company has been actively investing in the crypto space. The big tech giant and other major corporations in the legacy financial system have invested over $6 billion in digital asset companies from September 2021 to June 2022.

The report claims that Google, Samsung, BlackRock, and other corporations are investing in projects and products with the potential to improve their own offerings. Thus, the companies are investing in particular use cases apparently with the objective of integrating them into their business models.

The report claims that the amount invested by Alphabet and other companies is hard to track. The money flows via private funding rounds and other investment mechanisms. However, they used other methods to come up with approximate:

(…) we cannot determine how much money these corporations have invested, as they participate in funding rounds with multiple or many other investors. As a proxy of this, we can look at the total funding amounts of the rounds they participated in.

The report used data from CB Insights to get a pulse on the companies being supported by these major corporations. The report claims the following about the total number of companies that received funding from Google, BlackRock, Samsung, Goldman Sachs, and other financial behemoths:

The 40 companies invested approximately $6B into blockchain startups between September 2021 and June 2022. Because some rounds involve participation from multiple investors, it is unclear how much each company invested in a project.

As seen below, Alphabet has invested in Fireblocks, Dapper Labs, Vultage, and Digital Currency Group. Only the latter company has one of the biggest portfolios in the space with companies like Grayscale, Abra, Genesis, BitPay, and others.

What Are The Most Seek Crypto Use Cases?

As the images show, corporations are securing their positions in the crypto industry by investing across multiple sectors. As mentioned, Samsung has been diversifying its portfolio with a particular interest in non-fungible tokens, and the Metaverse with a capital injection into Yuga Labs (Bored Ape Yacht Club) and Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity).

In that sense, the report showed that NFTs and digital assets focused on supporting gaming services and marketplaces were one of the most seek use cases. Other popular applications were infrastructure providers, blockchains development platforms, and blockchain services companies. The report added:

Alphabet and Blackrock are showcasing a completely different strategy by making concentrated bets on a smaller set of companies (…). Banks have started to increase their exposure to crypto and blockchain services (some more than others) given increased client demand. This has led them to make investments in crypto custody, asset management, and trading.

Another company that saw a lot of attention from mega-corporations was TRM Labs. A compliance firm that has been integrated into Aave, Uniswap, and other Ethereum protocols to provide them with an “address screening feature” that can block certain entities from accessing their platforms.

At the time of writing, Ethereum (ETH) trades at $23,400 with a 2% loss in the last 24 hours.