Media’s Serious Cutback in Startup Investing

Last week, I argued which tech companies are most and least likely to buy media companies. It made me wonder how aggressive media companies have been in tech deal-making. So I looked at their investing patterns, and they surprised me.

Traditional media companies last year appeared to invest their smallest amount in startups since 2012, according to PitchBook. (See chart.) Companies including Comcast, Axel Springer, Time Warner and AT&T invested in just 10 deals that had a total dollar value of $130.5 million compared with 20 deals that had a total dollar value of $388 million the year before. (PitchBook doesn’t break out how much the investors put into each round.)