Bloomberg Beta Turns 10 in 2023

This year marks Bloomberg Beta’s 10th anniversary of serving extraordinary founders who define the future of work.

An early-stage venture capital firm, backed by Bloomberg LP, Beta looks at Bloomberg as a template for startups – founded on a powerful idea, bringing transparency to markets, achieving global scale, with a strong and open culture that embraces technology, and led by its founders.

Over the past 10 years, companies backed by Bloomberg Beta have raised more than $9.5 billion after they received an investment from the Beta team.

Returns that Bloomberg Beta founders generate go to fund Bloomberg Philanthropies, and founders often tell Beta that it’s a reason they chose their investment over that of other venture capital firms. And there is real action behind the commitment to helping the next generation of leaders. One of the Beta team’s annual traditions is giving back to the Patiño School of Entrepreneurship in Fresno, California, the nation’s first high school devoted to entrepreneurship where they engage their founder community to mentor the student entrepreneurs.

Beta has always been at the forefront of seeking out the latest innovations in the way business works, and it has become increasingly clear that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of those things.

Bloomberg Beta was the first VC firm to focus on artificial intelligence in 2014, and as news from early 2023 shows, something shifted this year on the topic. Through experimentation with machine learning tools, the team has experienced for themselves that it’s faster for developers to build applications, and easier for non-technical users to use models, than ever before. You no longer need a PhD in computer science to build an AI startup and Beta expects to see a landslide of new AI startups.

Ten years in, Bloomberg Beta recently announced its fourth fund and an “opportunity fund” to invest more into its most promising portfolio companies. The fourth fund is the same as the third in 2019… second in 2016… and first in 2013: James Cham, Karin Klein, and Roy Bahat remain three equal partners in the firm’s mission.

In the name of transparency, an ethos set from the initial idea behind the iconic Bloomberg Terminal bringing financial information to the desks of traders, finance professionals and more around the globe, Bloomberg Beta publishes its previously-internal operating manual — with many details on how the firm works. Click here to learn more about the firm, and the startups they’ve backed.