Bloomberg Beta is an early stage venture capital firm with $225M under management, capitalized solely by Bloomberg. The fund exists to expand Bloomberg’s horizons by investing in companies that are creating profound change in the way business operates, with a focus on machine intelligence and the future of work. Bloomberg Beta was recognized by VC review site CB Insights as the #2 investor in AI. Led by technology business operator and entrepreneur Roy Bahat, Bloomberg Beta has an unconventional investing model where anyone on the team can independently say yes to a deal. The fund's operating manual is publicly available online. Bloomberg Beta launched in June 2013 with $75 million of funding from Bloomberg L.P. A second fund of $75 million was announced in July 2016. In October 2019, they announced a third fund of $75 million. Bloomberg Beta is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with additional operations in New York City. Areas where Bloomberg Beta invests include: content discovery, cybersecurity, data sets and services, developer tools, full-stack startups using technology to compete in a new way, hardware, human-computer interaction, learning, media distribution, new organizational models, open-source software, productivity tools, professional networks, technology platforms, workflow tools, and workplace communication. Bloomberg Beta uses data to find new customers. Their "Future Founders" project started in 2014 to predict who will start companies before they do. In 2014, Bloomberg Beta began publishing an annual Machine Intelligence landscape to better understand what was happening in the startup ecosystem with artificial intelligence and machine learning. In May 2017, Bahat co-founded and co-chaired The Shift Commission on Work, Workers, and Technology to study the effects of AI on work 10-20 years out, alongside the president of think-tank New America, Anne-Marie Slaughter. Bloomberg Beta is the organizer behind "Comeback Cities," taking groups of venture capitalists and members of congress on bus tours throughout America to find untapped beds of talent and entrepreneurship.
Partners
Bloomberg Beta consists of three full-time partners: Roy Bahat, Karin Klein, and James Cham. Bahat is a Commissioner on the California Future of Work Commission, a lecturer at UC Berkeley, was the founding chairman of OUYA, a Kickstarter-backed game console, and former president of IGN Entertainment. He is a board member at the Center for Investigative Reporting. He was named one of Fast Company's most Creative People in Business, has served in the government and led a non-profit, and worked at established corporations and day-zero startups. He graduated from Harvard, and was a Rhodes Scholar. Klein has more than twenty years of operating and venture capital experience and runs Beta's East Coast investing activities. She currently serves on the board of Paramount Group, Regency Centers, and L'Oreal Women in Digital. Prior to launching Bloomberg Beta, she led new initiatives at Bloomberg, oversaw Softbank's venture team that reviewed new investments, and co-founded an educational training business for children. She has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is a Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the Annenberg School of Communications and The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. Cham speaks and writes on the implications of AI for companies, including a landscape of machine intelligence companies. Cham was previously a principle at Trinity Ventures and Vice President at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he worked on investments Twilio, Dropcam, and Lifelock. He's a former software developer and management consultant. He has an M.B.A from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was an undergraduate in computer science at Harvard College.
Relationship with Bloomberg L.P.
Bloomberg Beta is operated as a separate entity from Bloomberg L.P., which is the sole investor in the fund.
