Bloomberg Funds Bloomberg Beta for Second $75 Million Fund

Venture Firm to Continue Investing in the Future of Work

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Jul 19, 2016, 10:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, July 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Bloomberg L.P. today announced the close of a second $75 million fund with venture capital firm Bloomberg Beta. Bloomberg Beta focuses on the future of work, and the new fund will continue that dedicated focus, building on Bloomberg Beta's specialty in machine intelligence.

Bloomberg L.P. 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. Today's 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 $340 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 startups when Michael Bloomberg founded the company in 1981, and we try to carry that spirit in Bloomberg Beta," said 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."

Building on its transparency, 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 3^rd year, that Future Founders program uses a predictive model to identify people most likely to found a startup.

About Bloomberg
Bloomberg, the global business and financial information and news leader, gives influential decision makers a critical edge by connecting them to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas. The company's strength – delivering data, news and analytics through innovative technology, quickly and accurately – is at the core of the Bloomberg Professional service, which provides real time financial information to approximately 325,000 subscribers globally. For more information, visit www.bloomberg.com or request a demo.

About Bloomberg Beta
Bloomberg Beta is an early stage venture capital firm with $150M under management, capitalized solely by Bloomberg. The fund exists to expand Bloomberg's horizons by investing in companies that make business work better and was recognized by VC review site CB Insights as the #2 investor in AI. Bloomberg Beta invests purely for financial return. It is headquartered in San Francisco and New York, and its open sourced investment approach can be found at http://bloombergbeta.com. Led by Roy Bahat, a technology business operator and entrepreneur, Bloomberg Beta has an unconventional investing model where anyone on the team can say yes to a deal. The investing partnership has an equal male-to-female ratio. The partners at Bloomberg Beta are:

Roy Bahat in San Francisco, who prior to founding Bloomberg Beta led IGN Entertainment for five years, an online media company then owned by News Corporation. He was the founding chairman of OUYA, the venture-backed hardware startup. Roy teaches media at UC Berkeley, and is a board member at the Center for Investigative Reporting and educational non-profit CodeNow. He was named one of Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business, and has served in government and led a non-profit in addition to his work at established corporations and day zero startups. He is a graduate of Harvard College and was a Rhodes Scholar.

Karin Klein in New York heads Bloomberg Beta's investing activities on the east coast. She was on the Techweek100, Silicon Alley 100, Crain's Women to Watch in New York Tech, and New York Business Journal's "Women of Influence." Karin currently serves on the board of directors for Paramount Group and the advisory board of L'Oreal's Women in Digital and enjoys volunteering as a mentor with TechStars and the New York City Economic Development Corporation. She is the former head of new initiatives at Bloomberg and previously was vice president at Softbank's venture fund. At Softbank, Karin sourced and served on the board of Buddy Media prior to its acquisition by Salesforce. She also was the co-founder and president of an educational training business for children. Karin 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.

James Cham is a Partner at Bloomberg Beta based in Palo Alto. He invests in data-centric and machine learning-related companies. He was a principal at Trinity Ventures and Vice President at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he worked with investments like Dropcam, Twilio, 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.

Shivon Zilis in San Francisco is focused on machine intelligence. She publishes an annual report that researches thousands of machine intelligence companies and maps the most promising. She is an advisor to OpenAI, a fellow at the Creative Destruction Lab, on the advisory board of University of Alberta's Machine Learning group, and a charter member of C100. She co-hosts an annual conference at the University of Toronto that brings together the foremost authors, academics, founders, and investors in machine intelligence. She is on Forbes list of 30 Under 30 in Venture Capital. She graduated from Yale, where she was the goalie on the ice hockey team.

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SOURCE Bloomberg L.P.