New York City-based Betaworks has closed its $66 million Fund III, which will focus on investing in early-stage AI companies.
Betaworks has been investing in AI since at least 2016 and, through its investment program Camp, has backed companies such as Huggingface and Granola. Jordan Crook, a partner at the firm (and former TechCrunch employee), said the new fund will focus on agents, native AI interfaces, and application-layer AI.
“Around these themes, we will continue to do straight seed investing and the Betaworks Camps,” Crook said.
Fund III will seek to invest in at least 25 pre-seed to seed investments, as well as make at least 50 investments into startups as part of the Betaworks Camp program. “Thus far, we’ve done around 37 deals,” Crook said, adding that the average check size was around $500,000.
Crook called the current fundraising environment “frothy” for startups, and “spiky” for funds, but she noted that Fund III saw many of the firm’s previous limited partners returning to invest.
