Many businesses make investments in themselves, in the form of research and development and capital expenditures, to grow more profitable. Alphabet (ticker: GOOG, GOOGL) has gone a step further by establishing two venture capital arms that continue to find and fund startups: Google Ventures, with $5 billion under management, and CapitalG, with $3 billion under management, have provided the means for a number of startups to grow, and in some cases go public. These aren't the so-called "moonshots" the company is famous for investing in -- those ideas and innovations may never bear fruit.