Bloomberg has held the close of a second USD75 million fund with venture capital firm Bloomberg Beta.
The new fund, which will focus on the future of work, will build on Bloomberg Beta's specialty in machine intelligence.
Bloomberg has made significant investments in technology, systems and applications, employing 4,000 technologists and engineers who build and support a platform that moves markets around the world.
Bloomberg Beta expands on those investments by investing in companies that make business work better.
The announcement comes three years after the formation of Bloomberg Beta's first fund. Since that time, Bloomberg Beta's announced investments have secured more than USD340 million in total capital, while three companies backed by Bloomberg Beta have been acquired. Bloomberg Beta's portfolio founders have given it a Net Promoter Score of 82, which has climbed every year.
"Bloomberg was one of the original technology start-ups when Michael Bloomberg founded the company in 1981, and we try to carry that spirit in Bloomberg Beta," says Roy Bahat, head of Bloomberg Beta. "In our first fund, Bloomberg supported us in creating a different kind of venture fund. We built Bloomberg Beta to treat our founders like we treat Bloomberg's customers, with great care, trust, transparency and a service driven by data. The revolutionary plan for our second fund is to just keep on doing exactly what we've been doing."
Bloomberg Beta open sourced its internal operating manual on GitHub, eventually abandoning a traditional website entirely. The firm also developed a unique methodology to predict who will start companies: now in its third year, that Future Founders programme uses a predictive model to identify people most likely to found a start-up.
