New York Metropolis-based Betaworks has closed its $66 million Fund III, which is able to deal with investing in early-stage AI firms.
Betaworks has been investing in AI since no less than 2016 and, by means of its funding program Camp, has backed firms akin to Huggingface and Granola. Jordan Criminal, a companion on the agency (and former TechCrunch worker), stated the brand new fund will deal with brokers, native AI interfaces, and application-layer AI.
“Round these themes, we are going to proceed to do straight seed investing and the Betaworks Camps,” Criminal stated.
Fund III will search to spend money on no less than 25 pre-seed to seed investments, in addition to make no less than 50 investments into startups as a part of the Betaworks Camps program. “To this point, we’ve completed round 37 offers,” Criminal stated, including that the typical verify measurement was round $500,000.
Criminal referred to as the present fundraising setting “frothy” for startups, and “spiky” for funds, however she famous that Fund III noticed most of the agency’s earlier restricted companions returning to speculate.
“The fundraising setting in enterprise was difficult in 2024, and we weren’t exempt, provided that we have been upsizing our fund,” she stated.
Betaworks beforehand raised a $46 million Fund II in 2020, and a $48 million Fund I in 2016. It launched in 2008 as a enterprise studio, and has since turn out to be a staple within the New York Metropolis tech ecosystem, launching its Betaworks Camps program in 2016. The agency’s different notable investments embody Tumblr and Kickstarter.
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