Google Parent’s Investing Arm Battles Suspicion in Profit Quest
- Alphabet is most-active corporate investor in private deals
- As regulators rein in Google, CapitalG taps into new tech
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CapitalG, a private investment arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc.. has been in all the right places lately, generating billions of dollars in gains. The success is raising questions about the company’s strategy and sprawling influence over the technology industry.
In the last year and a half, four of CapitalG’s 36 portfolio companies have gone public, including Lyft Inc. and Crowdstrike Holdings Inc. Airbnb Inc. plans to do the same. Another four have been acquired. One of them, cloud analytics provider Looker, was bought by Google itself for $2.6 billion. At the end of June, Alphabet’s stakes in privately held companies were worth almost $11 billion, with unrealized gains of almost $3 billion.