Once an executive experiences the entrepreneurial spark, it’s hard to extinguish. The latest McKinsey Global Survey on corporate venture building finds that leaders of companies that have built new ventures want to build more.1 Responses show that companies that have launched new ventures—that is, entirely new products, services, or businesses that go beyond incremental upgrades to create entirely new revenue streams—in the past five years are significantly more likely than others to prioritize venture building. Surveyed executives say these efforts are achieving returns quickly and with less investment than in previous years, and the more ventures they build, the more success they report.
The findings also suggest that, overall, companies’ venture-building skills are maturing. In our sixth annual survey on the topic, reported new ventures are seeing larger revenues earlier than in the past. Meanwhile, the practices that set successful venture builders apart go beyond the more foundational elements that emerged as success factors in previous years, such as having a C-suite sponsor and sufficient financial resources. In particular, companies with successful ventures are using technology such as AI to enable their creation of new ventures, and many respondents say data- and AI-driven ventures are in their future.
The macroeconomic environment isn’t deterring venture builders
The current macroeconomic environment—in which geopolitical instability and changes in trade policy vie for executives’ attention—has posed challenges for organizations so far in 2025. Lower-than-average consumer confidence reflects widespread economic uncertainty.2 Despite these potential obstacles, surveyed business leaders report that companies with experience in building new ventures remain committed to such efforts. In fact, experienced business builders are doubling down. Leaders from companies that have built new ventures in the past five years are 13 times more likely than others to have increased their prioritization of new-venture building in the past year. New-venture building is a top five priority for 58 percent of experienced venture builders, suggesting experience with new-venture building inspires companies to keep at it.
Those companies that take the calculated risk to build new ventures often see success. After several years in which 43 to 44 percent of respondents reported successful new ventures that met or exceeded their core organization’s expectations for growth or scale, the share is approaching 50 percent in the latest survey.3
These new ventures are generating meaningful revenues. This year, we see a larger share of reported new ventures with annual revenues over $10 million. Sixty-one percent of respondents say their new ventures have crossed this mark, up from 45 percent in 2023 (Exhibit 1).4 A closer look shows that the share reporting revenues between $50 million and $100 million has nearly doubled, with a corresponding reduction in new ventures with reported revenues less than $1 million. The findings also suggest that new ventures are generating value faster than in previous years. The average age of new ventures that respondents say have revenues over $10 million has decreased to about two and a half years (31 months), compared with more than three years (38 months) in the earlier research.5
The findings also suggest that when it comes to building new ventures, more is better; a portfolio of multiple ventures leads to larger reported gains. Fifty-nine percent of surveyed business leaders who launched three or more new ventures in the past five years say their companies are seeing more than 10 percent of total enterprise-wide revenue from their venture-building efforts, compared with 32 percent of respondents from companies that launched just one new venture.
We also see differences in success when looking at the underlying focus of new ventures. Ventures built around digital products and services—such as software, mobile apps, and cloud-based platforms—generated the highest average revenue, while hardware or physical-product ventures generated lower revenues.
Companies are limiting their exposure to risk and breaking even within two years
Our research shows that companies are being judicious about their investments in new-venture building. The findings suggest that they are creating new ventures based on proven concepts or existing assets, largely staying within the industry they know, and using AI to build ventures more efficiently at a time when AI technologies can create significant value for businesses with just a few employees. As a result, they are breaking even after lower levels of investment—and that’s disproportionately true for the companies building the most ventures. In last year’s research, we found that the weighted average investment required before a new venture broke even6 was about $125 million, whereas this year it has dramatically decreased to $77 million (Exhibit 2). This translates to an average of about 2 percent7 of the core organization’s annual revenue required as an investment to break even in 2025.
Respondents from the most experienced companies—that is, those that respondents say have built at least three ventures in the past five years—report the strongest outcomes. These respondents report generating 1.9 times the revenue for every dollar invested until breaking even, compared with 1.3 at companies that have launched just one or two ventures.8
Our latest research also looked for the first time at how long it takes new ventures to break even, and more than eight in ten respondents report breaking even within three years. In fact, the majority break even within the first two years of operations (Exhibit 3). Companies headquartered in Asia and Latin America get their ventures to break even more swiftly. Among the 22 percent of respondents whose new venture broke even within their first year of operations, a majority are based in Asia, while most ventures breaking even in the second year of operations are built by companies headquartered in Latin America.
The timing and level of investment required to build a value-generating venture differ based on the type of asset at its core. In our survey, nearly one-third of respondents say their new ventures focusing on data or intellectual property broke even with investments of less than $1 million, while a much smaller share says ventures focusing on physical products required investments under $1 million before breaking even (see sidebar “Data monetization: A lower-cost option for new-venture building”). What’s more, industrial consumer-focused products each have a longer break-even period—a weighted average of more than two years, compared with new ventures built around data and intellectual property. This can be expected, in our experience, given that digital businesses are easier to scale than those requiring physical production and distribution.
Often, the best new ventures stem from existing assets not yet living up to their potential, and we found in last year’s research that nearly nine in ten business leaders said their organizations had at least one asset with unrealized commercial potential. This year, respondents who say their companies had above-average growth rates compared with industry peers in the past 12 months—that is, high-performing companies—are much more likely than other respondents to say their companies have scaled new ventures out of assets that had unrealized potential. Overall, 72 percent of respondents who say their companies built such ventures report above-average growth.
Often, high-performing companies are not creating entirely new playbooks from scratch; rather, they use proven business concepts from other markets (that is, from outside the organization). Of respondents who say their companies used proven concepts, two-thirds report an above-average organic rate of growth for their industries. Adopting a successful start-up business model is often a successful strategy we see for incumbents to scale their new ventures quickly. For example, JPMorgan Chase introduced online bank Chase UK, using the digital-first approach popularized by neobanks such as Monzo and Revolut to attract tech-savvy customers and expand its market presence.
Additionally, we find that companies are increasingly launching new ventures that are within their primary industry. While in 2024, about half of respondents said the new venture they were most familiar with was built in the same industry as their company’s primary industry, this year, about six in ten reported staying close to home.
AI is helping companies—especially repeat builders—launch new ventures
Many executives say their companies are already using AI for a wide range of tasks within venture-building efforts, though they expect to use AI in even more ways in the years ahead (Exhibit 4). The most commonly reported uses for AI within venture building in the past 12 months include operational aspects such as enhancing workflow efficiency and monitoring the scaling of new ventures, as well as more creative uses such as developing new-venture ideas or marketing campaigns for the ventures (see sidebar “How AI is reshaping venture building”). Increasingly, we see that AI agents can support companies across the entire venture-building process, from ideation and building the first prototypes to scaling the go-to-market plan. This enables companies to build multimillion-dollar businesses with only a handful of employees. Just recently, Base44, an AI coding start-up, was sold to Wix, a web development platform, for $80 million—and it had just eight employees.
Responses suggest that the companies seeing the largest revenues from new ventures are the most advanced users of AI. The respondents who say their companies are using AI for more complex activities in their venture-building efforts—such as building new businesses with AI as their primary value proposition, validating initial business concepts, and improving go-to-market strategies by personalizing marketing campaigns or improving the customer journey—report ventures with revenues twice as large as those using AI for more basic tasks and four times as large as the small share of respondents who say their companies aren’t using AI.9
The most experienced venture builders—serial builders that have built more than three ventures in the past five years—are the most likely to be advanced users of AI. Seventy-two percent of respondents at these companies say they are using AI for more complex activities, compared with 60 percent of respondents at companies that have built fewer ventures.
While the changing economic environment has tightened the funding spigot for new ventures overall, companies are still planning to invest in AI- or data-focused ventures. Fifty-six percent of respondents say their companies are planning to build data, analytics, or AI-driven businesses within the next five years, up from 49 percent in 2024.
Even if they aren’t planning to make AI the focal point of a new venture, nearly all respondents who expect their companies to build new ventures in the next five years say their organizations will use AI to assist their efforts (Exhibit 5). Only 3 percent of respondents say their companies won’t use AI to assist with venture building in the years ahead. Additionally, 84 percent of respondents say their companies will need to integrate AI or automation into their new-venture-building process over the next five years.
The key fundamentals to get right: Technology and people
New ventures are only as successful as the people, culture, and technology used to build them. Our survey findings suggest that companies have gotten better at the nuts and bolts of venture building over the past five years and now realize that getting the people equation right is a leading indicator of a venture’s potential success. Last year, having a C-suite sponsor to champion new-venture-building efforts, dedicated financial resources, and a systematic approach to monitoring and evaluating were the elements that stood out most among the most successful venture builders. However, the latest results suggest that these are now foundational elements and that workforce-related capabilities, such as the ability to upskill and to use the latest technologies, have become the biggest areas of distinction.
Use technology as a catalyst
Companies that successfully build ventures tend to have the technology and modern infrastructure necessary for launching new businesses. Having advanced technological capabilities—such as generative AI, digital platforms, and a scalable IT infrastructure—is one of the most common traits among companies with successful ventures. Investing in advanced tools and technologies, while ensuring proper alignment with the organization’s operating models and upskilling initiatives, can amplify a new venture’s competitive edge and improve its ability to scale.
Build with the right culture and people
When we looked at the attributes that companies have in place when building new ventures, we found that a culture that embraces risk-taking and experimentation stands out. Sixty-eight percent of business leaders who report such a culture say their ventures have been successful at meeting or exceeding expectations (Exhibit 6). Embedding a culture in which employees feel emboldened to experiment—without fear of failure—inspires innovation that can drive growth. In our experience, we have seen that the right setting allows this to happen: Every employee has clarity on what to deliver each day and how their work contributes to a broader goal, and they are not only allowed but expected to take measured risks.
The success of corporate venture building also hinges on the upskilling of people at all levels of the organization. More than half of respondents with successful new ventures say their organizations foster the necessary skills for new-venture building through upskilling programs that train employees on topics such as customer discovery methods or hypothesis testing, whereas 42 percent of leaders with unsuccessful ventures report having upskilling programs.
Companies eye data-driven ventures for the years ahead
Creating new ventures is a strategic imperative for business leaders. Most respondents continue to expect venture building to be one of the top strategic moves their organization will pursue within the next 12 months (Exhibit 7), as was true in 2024. They are nearly as likely to expect new-venture building as they are to expect organizational transformation and cost cutting, which are common value-creating moves during times of uncertainty.
As we have seen in the previous two editions of this annual research, respondents largely expect to create new ventures focused on data, analytics, or AI in the next five years (Exhibit 8). This is especially true for companies in technology, media, and telecommunications; financial services; and advanced industries. Venture building is one of four prevalent approaches to capturing value from AI that companies take today. The first is innovating existing products and services by embedding new AI-driven capabilities into offerings to create fresh revenue streams. The second is monetizing data through products or business models, while the next is building an entirely new AI-native business unit to disrupt operations or markets. Finally, the fourth involves reshaping an organization’s entire portfolio using state-of-the-art AI tools and technologies.
Respondents working in energy and materials continue to expect to build environment- or sustainability-focused new ventures, while those working for consumer goods or retail companies most often expect to see new physical products.
Business leaders are confident that new ventures will contribute positively to their enterprise-wide revenue in the next five years, particularly when compared with their historical performance. According to our research, new ventures built over the past five years have contributed about 12 percent of total enterprise-wide revenue10 across industries. Looking ahead, respondents anticipate this figure will increase to approximately 19 percent in the next five years.
In periods of economic uncertainty, it’s easy for business leaders to default to a focus on immediate profitability, delaying longer-term growth initiatives such as new-venture building. But our research shows this could be a costly mistake. Our survey shows that companies that invest in new-venture building—and particularly those that deploy AI capabilities to launch ventures more efficiently—can find outsize success with the practice, quickly generating new revenue that often meets or exceeds their expectations. That success is a catalyst for more success; once business leaders create one venture, they are eager to create others. Those who merely dabble in venture building don’t see the same level of success as repeat builders, who can develop ventures with bigger revenues for relatively similar amounts of investment as others.
Our findings suggest that business leaders are concentrating on launching new ventures that might have higher chances of success, and they are more proficient at building them than they used to be. To make sure they’re equipped to get started, other companies can focus on training their employees with the skills they will need to help scale new ventures. AI-enabled skill assessments, structured learning journeys with continuous development opportunities, and capability-building programs can all help.
