Financial data and news giant Bloomberg has branched out into the venture capital world, launching a $75 million fund focusing on technology start-ups within its "broad area of interest".
Bloomberg Beta says that its initial focus will be on firms working on "producing insights from data" and "making the experience of work better".
So far, money has already been given to Newsle, which helps users track people in the news; Nodejitsu, a cloud management software firm; Codecademy, a coding education outfit; and talent management software provider ProsperWorks.
The fund is being led by Roy Bahat in San Francisco, who was previously in charge of IGN Entertainment, an online media company.
Daniel Doctoroff, CEO, Bloomberg, says: "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 stresses that the new entity is a true fund, investing for financial return and "selecting companies independently of their current or future business relationship with Bloomberg".
The firm has recently come in for criticism over how it keeps different parts of the business separate after it emerged that reporters were snooping on clients using its desktop data terminals.