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I'm sure this is well-known, but the dutch East India Company invented investing, having investors invest in a future voyage, paying the upfront cost of the journey, reducing the risk of the company, and if the journey was successful they would get a profit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company

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Risk sharing with investors predates the VOC by a few centuries if not millennia. iirc Hansa merchants invested in the modern sense and the Code of Hammurabi, written around 1700 BCE, provides a legal framework to things that could be construed as invested. The Italian republics, China, etc. probably have more of the same.

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