Corporate venture capital(CVC) refers to the capital raised by established firms to acquire minority equity stakes in privately held venture firms for strategic purposes. In order to enhance the innovation performance from the operation of CVC, firms need to invest in sectors distant from the current business or knowledge base. However, the research on the antecedents of such explorative investment has received less attention. In this vein, this paper investigates how the diversity of a firm’s venture investment experience affects the likelihood of the firm’s explorative venture investment. Based on a sample of 3,032 venture investments during 2006 and 2015, we found that firms that had invested in ventures of diverse industry sectors were more likely to materialize explorative investments. We also found that the positive effect of the experience diversity on the likelihood of explorative investment was enhanced when the firm had sufficient absorptive capacity and the venture investment was operated directly by an internal department.