Bloomberg has launched Bloomberg Beta, a USD75m venture fund to invest in and create early-stage technology companies.
Bloomberg Beta, in keeping with Bloomberg LP’s longstanding pattern of entrepreneurialism, is focused on backing and working alongside exceptional founders.
Bloomberg Beta exists to expand Bloomberg LP’s horizons by investing in and creating companies within Bloomberg’s broad areas of interest.
Set up as a true fund, Bloomberg Beta will invest for financial return, selecting companies independently of their current or future business relationship with Bloomberg LP.
"Bloomberg Beta is a natural extension of the entrepreneurial spirit and culture of Bloomberg," says Daniel Doctoroff (pictured), chief executive and president of Bloomberg LP. "We’re guided by the belief that the best investors are entrepreneurs and the best entrepreneurs are investors. Through Beta, we get to back and build breakthrough companies in the areas we care about, and entrepreneurs get an investor whose interest is fully aligned with theirs."
Bloomberg Beta’s initial focus areas are producing insights from data (data, technology platforms, content discovery, media distribution) and making the experience of work better (networks and communities, human-computer interaction, and radically new organisational models).
In these areas, Bloomberg Beta’s first announced investments are Newsle, MkII, Nodejitsu, Codecademy, Errplane and ProsperWorks.
“Bloomberg LP is itself a template for startups – first to succeed in its market, founded on a big idea, with a strong culture, and guided by its founders for three decades,” says Roy Bahat, head of Bloomberg Beta. “With Bloomberg Beta we can nurture the new generation of technology companies built on this template. We’re entrepreneurs at heart, and we want to invest and make companies. We’re fortunate to have a patient backer in Bloomberg LP, which has seen firsthand the rewards to growing an extraordinary company over time.”
