Even less formal alliances exist, most of them unreported -- like between the world's leading designer of microchips, Intel, and Sharp, a major Japanese manufacturer: Intel do the research and design; Sharp the manufacturing. Each company will separately then market the resulting new products and neither firm invests a penny in the other.
In telecommunications there are the 'consortia' in which three or more big established telephone companies (often based on different continents) team up to obtain licenses for cellular-phone services all over the world, or for cable TV, or to buy into an old government monopoly about to be privatized. One reason for this is that no company has enough money to do the deal alone. Another is that no one company has the need technology. In many parts of the work, such as coastal China and Malaysia, business cannot be done except through a joint venture or an alliance with a local partner.