Public firms are active participants in venture capital markets, yet face asymmetric reporting requirements that conflict with VC contracts designed to preserve opacity. This paper examines how reporting regulation affects public firms' venture capital activity by exploiting a 2015 change in U.S. GAAP consolidation rules (ASU 2015-02) that increases the likelihood that public non-financial firms must consolidate their corporate venture capital funds. Consolidation eliminates mechanisms investors use to commit to limited information acquisition from startups by subjecting portfolio investments to stricter reporting requirements. I construct a panel of deal activity for U.S. investors by merging venture capital data with investor time-series data and employ a triple-difference regression design. Public non-financial firms reduce deal growth by approximately 11\% relative to other investor groups following the rule change. The effects concentrate where information frictions are most severe: in early-stage startups and in cases where investors have competing strategic interests. Public non-financial firms retreat from fund structures and become less likely to provide follow-on financing to existing fund investments; affected firms with fund investments report significant increases in Level 3 assets consistent with fund consolidation requirements. Public non-financial firms substitute toward acquiring VC-backed companies outright. These findings demonstrate how stricter reporting rules constrain public firms' ability to participate in opaque private transactions, widening the regulatory gap with private investors and thereby reshaping capital allocation in entrepreneurial finance markets.
