The evolving landscape of corporate innovation is being reshaped with a new tool in the corporate venture strategy toolbox: the corporate venture studio (a venture studio built inside a corporate).

When done right, this new breed of venture studio is turbocharging the creation of next-generation startups within the four walls of a corporation. As a leader in venture building and co-creators of the venture studio model itself while at High Alpha, our team is often asked who are the best corporate venture studios. Below are some of our findings in evaluating both our own programs and those we admire in our peers and friends across the industry.

Best Corporate Venture Studios

Alloy Partners: Speed and Scale in Building Startups & Venture Studios

Alloy Partners stands out as a premier corporate venture builder, leveraging deep collaboration with large organizations to co-create startups and venture studios. In just five years, Alloy has launched over 35 companies and 6 venture studios—a testament to its rapid execution and unique, repeatable playbook for co-innovation.

Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Indianapolis, the Alloy Partners portfolio includes startups and venture studios started in partnership with leading organizations, including Huntington Bank, Eli Lilly, Elanco, Capital One, Catalyst by Wellstar, University of Notre Dame, University of North Carolina, Purdue University, DNX Ventures, University of Wisconsin, and many more. Today, Alloy Partners is an industry leader and expert in how corporations build, launch, and scale startups—offering a model for others to follow in unlocking radical growth and innovation. 

Distinctly, Alloy Partners melds the resources and market intelligence of leading corporations with the entrepreneurial rigor of seasoned founders. Its focus: delivering scalable, strategic growth by co-owning the venture journey—from ideation, funding, and launch to scaling. Alloy has pioneered new business models in sectors such as supply chain (Amplio), carbon marketplaces (Athian), and biomass energy production (Woodchuck.ai).

X/Moonshot (Alphabet)

Known as Alphabet’s “factory for moonshots,” X/Moonshot Factory tackles audacious global issues with breakthrough technology. Their approach is a fusion of scientific rigor and high-permission risk-taking, with a mandate to generate ventures capable of operating as independent businesses under Alphabet or standalone entities. Notable launches include Waymo (autonomous vehicles), Wing (drone delivery), and Google Glass, showcasing how X scales deep tech solutions for massive impact.

P&G Ventures

As the venture studio arm of Procter & Gamble, P&G Ventures applies its consumer insight expertise to incubate startups in health, wellness, and sustainability. P&G Ventures is notable for transforming internal R&D and external partnerships into investable, market-ready companies, targeting everyday problems for millions of consumers. Its access to P&G’s global scale ensures promising ideas move quickly from lab to market.

ENGIE Factory

ENGIE Factory is the startup studio for ENGIE Group, a global energy leader. The studio is based in Singapore and partners with founders to focus on building new climate-tech startups with the goal of a carbon-neutral economy. We recently interviewed Temá Benhalima-Bouville at ENGIE on the Advantaged Podcast, discussing their venture studio journey and the success of ENGIE Factory. Be sure to listen to the episode to learn more about ENGIE and their studio approach.

MIT Proto Ventures

MIT Proto Ventures is MIT’s venture studio that identifies opportunities based on technology and research from within MIT. They strive to identify unrecognized opportunities around problems, connect with MIT researchers to engineer solutions, and ultimately create business opportunities with the goal of solving real-world problems. Proto Ventures is a great example of an R&D venture studio working within the university research system. MIT Proto Ventures' funding typically comes from family offices that fund individual "channels" that will pursue and launch a handful of new startups over a couple of years.

We also recently interviewed the MIT Proto Ventures team and two of their venture builders on the Advantaged Podcast, discussing venture studios within R&D organizations. Listen to the episode here.

1842 Venture Studio & 1842 Fund

1842 Studio & Fund is a venture studio and venture fund that co-creates and invests in startups that align with Notre Dame's mission to become the Global Catholic Research Institution. The 1842 Fund is an inception and pre-seed stage venture capital fund anchored by the University of Notre Dame and managed by Alloy Partners. The studio launched in December of 2023 and has invested and launched nearly a dozen startups to-date.