These three charts show how big tech companies are challenging traditional VC firms

For several years now, big companies like Google and Intel have been in the world of venture capital.

With a separate VC arm, they not only get to invest in hot startups early on, but also get first dibs when a chance to acquire them comes.

Now, seemingly almost every big tech company, including Cisco, Samsung, and Comcast, has its own VC entity. Even non-tech companies like Walgreens and 7-Eleven have their own VC arms.

A recent report by CB Insights, a venture capital research firm, gives a better idea of how quickly they're growing:

Last year, both the number of deals and their investment amount have jumped for corporate VCs.

Last year saw the highest number of corporate VCs making investments.

The average deal size was also way higher than previous years. Deal size is also much bigger than the industry average.

Other fun facts:

• -California dominates: California had more than 50% of all corporate VC deals last year (followed by New York and Massachusetts).
• Series A is big: 28% of all corporate VC deals took place in Series A (the largest among all stages) in Q4 2014. The year before that, Series B deals had the largest share.
• Corporate VCs are still small relative to whole VC industry: There were 3,617 total VC deals last year, and only about 18% of them were done by corporate VCs. That's still a 3% rise from the year before.
• Google rules: Google Ventures did more investments than any other corporate VC last year. Intel Capital and Salesforce Ventures took #2 and #3, respectively.

Here's the top 20 list: