It is a business in which Japanese companies are collectively investing billions of dollars, hoping to dominate a technology that could replace the cathode-ray tube now used in computers and television sets.

At the height of the Internet boom, venture firms collectively invested $23 billion to $29 billion a quarter.

They collectively invested $62.7 billion in technology start-ups in 2000, according to VentureOne, a financial research firm, compared with $14.3 billion last year and $3.1 billion in the first three months of 2007.

May co-founded The Dinner Club, an investment group of 60 Washington, D.C. angels who collectively invest in regional early stage ventures.

Last Wednesday, 30 of the heaviest hitters in Mexican business - men like Carlos Slim Helu of Telefonos de Mexico and Claudio X. Gonzalez of Kimberly-Clark - announced that their companies would collectively invest $6.2 billion in 1996.

Traders said the market began climbing today immediately after its opening and got a strong boost at midmorning when 38 of Mexico's top corporate executives announced in a meeting with President Ernesto Zedillo that their companies would collectively invest $6.2 billion in Mexico during 1996, an increase of 40 percent over this year.

The group doesn't invest collectively, as stock investment clubs do, though it does encourage independent partnerships.

Like producers of other commodities, such as beef, dairy and eggs, soybean farmers collectively invest a portion of their end-of-season profits to fund research and promotion efforts through a commodity checkoff program.

Investing collectively, the N.A.I.C. says, provides a shield against missteps that solo investors do not have.

It is formed so as to enable a group of investors, usually individuals, to invest collectively in another entity.