Investor Profile: Betaworks Ventures — Thesis, Cheque Size & How to Apply

Betaworks Ventures is the venture arm of Betaworks, the New York startup studio behind companies like Giphy and TweetDeck. It describes itself as a product-focused seed-stage fund that invests in "surprising new consumer behaviors and trends powered by frontier technologies" — and it is "usually among the first institutional investors" in its companies. For founders researching Betaworks Ventures funding, including how to get funding from Betaworks Ventures, the flagship route in is its in-residence Camp programme.

Investment thesis and sectors

The fund invests at pre-seed and seed, typically as the first money in, and rarely before a product exists. Its current applied-AI thesis centres on agents, native AI interfaces and application-layer AI — the theme of its $66 million Fund III, closed in 2025. Stated sectors include AI agents, AI interfaces, consumer, media, social and developer tools.

Fund size and cheque size

Betaworks Ventures has raised three funds: Fund I at $50 million (2017), Fund II at $46 million (2020) and Fund III at $66 million (2025). Its typical cheque size ranges from $100,000 to $500,000, with Camp companies averaging around $500,000.

Notable portfolio companies

Betaworks has a dual identity as studio and investor. Studio-built companies include Giphy (acquired by Meta for around $400M), TweetDeck (sold to Twitter), Dots (acquired by Take-Two) and Bitly (sold to Spectrum Equity). As an investor it was an early backer of Tumblr and Kickstarter, and held early seed stakes in Anchor and Gimlet Media, both acquired by Spotify in 2019. Hugging Face started at Betaworks' BotCamp in 2016, where the firm led a roughly $1.2M angel round in 2017.

Programmes and partners

Betaworks Camp is a thematic, 12-week in-residence programme for startups building in frontier technologies, run twice a year in the firm's New York Meatpacking offices for 8–12 companies per cohort, ending in a Demo Day. Past themes include BotCamp, VoiceCamp, VisionCamp, AudioCamp, SyntheticCamp and applied-AI camps on the app layer, agents and native applications. The firm was founded by John Borthwick, its managing partner; Matt Hartman and Peter Rojas were the announcing partners of Fund I. Camp participation is free — the firm states it does not charge to participate — but no startup credits or perks catalogue is published.

How to apply for funding from Betaworks Ventures

The documented route is Betaworks Camp: the official Camp page links an application form, with stated application windows of December–January for the spring cohort and June–July for the autumn cohort. Camp companies typically receive investment of around $500,000. For direct fund investments outside Camp, the firm publishes no email or application form — its Ventures copy simply invites founders to get in touch.