Here's a number that should matter to every CVC leader: 47%.

That's the percentage of corporate venture capital programs that report at least half their portfolio companies have active commercial engagement with the parent company, according to the latest Global Corporate Venturing survey. It's not a participation trophy. It's the line separating strategic CVCs from what Nicolas Sauvage (President of TDK Ventures) calls "corporate-colored VC funds."

If you're running a CVC and your attach rate is below 50%, you're essentially operating an expensive scout fund. And your CFO knows it.

What Attach Rate Actually Measures

Attach rate is straightforward: what percentage of your portfolio companies have commercial relationships with your parent organization? Not "had a meeting once." Not "on the roadmap." Active engagement—pilots, partnerships, design-wins, revenue.

The GCV data shows 47% of CVCs hit the 50% benchmark. Only 19% reach 75% or higher. That's the gold standard, and it's rare because it's hard.

Low attach rates signal one of three problems: you're investing in companies that don't fit your corporate strategy, your parent organization can't or won't engage with startups, or you lack the infrastructure to activate those relationships. High attach rates prove the opposite—you're picking companies that align with corporate needs AND you've built the machinery to turn access into advantage.

How the Best CVCs Actually Do This

Here's what's changed: 36% of CVCs now have dedicated platform or business development teams supporting their portfolios. These aren't investment professionals—they're operators focused entirely on connecting portfolio companies to the right internal stakeholders.

TDK Ventures shared their approach on a recent GCV webinar: an "engagement checkerboard" that visualizes every portfolio company against every relevant business unit inside the parent. Each intersection gets color-coded based on relationship stage: introduction (grey), active evaluation (yellow), design-in (orange), design-win with revenue (green).

It's simple. It's visual. And it makes the invisible work of strategic value creation completely transparent to leadership.

The insight isn't the tool—it's that you can't manage what you don't measure. Most CVCs track investment metrics religiously (IRR, MOIC, follow-on rates) but have no systematic view of commercial engagement. TDK open-sourced their model under a Commons license because they believe the entire CVC community needs better infrastructure for this.

The pattern we see across high-performing CVCs: dedicated engagement teams, clear KPIs around commercial relationships, and compensation structures that reward strategic value delivery alongside financial returns. About 49% of CVCs now have formal venture clienting functions. That's not overhead—it's the difference between portfolio companies and business partners.

Why This Improves Returns, Not Just Optics

The counterintuitive truth: strategic engagement doesn't compete with financial returns. It drives them.

Corporate-backed startups have 30% lower bankruptcy rates and higher exit rates compared to startups without corporate investors. More than half of all startup funding dollars now come from rounds that include a corporate backer. The market is voting with capital—and the signal is clear.

High attach rates mean you're not just passively holding equity. You're actively accelerating the companies you've backed through distribution, go-to-market access, technical validation, and customer introductions. That's not charity—it's compounding advantage that shows up in valuation at the next funding round. This is what we call advantaged startups—companies built with structural advantages that traditional VC-backed companies simply can't access.

The Last Mile Problem

At Alloy, we co-create companies with corporate partners from day one through our venture studio approach, so commercial relationships are baked into the business model from inception. We've built 35+ companies this way with partners like Huntington Bank, Elanco, and Catalyst by Wellstar.

From that vantage point, we see a consistent pattern: CVCs have great deal flow and smart investment teams, but many struggle with the "last mile"—turning portfolio access into business outcomes. The gap isn't finding good companies. It's activating the relationships after the check clears.

That's an infrastructure problem, not a strategy problem. And it's fixable. This is the core difference between traditional CVC investing and venture building—we don't just write checks and hope for commercial engagement. We architect it from day one.

When Attach Rate Is (and Isn't) the Right Metric

Let's be clear: attach rate isn't the right metric for every CVC.

If your thesis is early-stage optionality—investing in seed companies to learn where markets are moving—then forcing commercial engagement too early can actually harm the relationship. Same if you're doing ecosystem intelligence or technology scouting. Those are valid strategies, but they require different metrics (market insights generated, technology trends identified, follow-on investment thesis validated).

Attach rate works when your CVC's primary value proposition is strategic integration with the parent. If that's not your game, don't pretend it is just to appease internal stakeholders. CVC is just one tool in the corporate innovation toolkit, and attach rate only matters if strategic integration is your thesis.

The nuance matters: a 30% attach rate at seed stage looks very different from 30% at Series B. Early-stage companies often aren't ready for enterprise partnerships. But if you're investing at Series A or later and still can't crack 50%, that's a red flag.

Watch out for false positives too—pilot programs that go nowhere, "strategic partnerships" that exist only in press releases, or engagements that distract founders without creating real value. Quality of engagement matters as much as quantity.

The real question isn't "what's our attach rate?" It's "does our CVC thesis require commercial integration, or are we playing a different game?" If the answer is integration, then 47% is your baseline and 75% is your target. If it's optionality or ecosystem intelligence, build metrics that match.

Measure what matters to your strategy. Then build the infrastructure to win at it.

Drew Beechler is VP of Marketing at Alloy Partners, where he works with corporate partners to co-create advantaged startups. Drew hosts the Advantaged podcast and previously founded and led marketing at multiple venture-backed startups.