Betaworks Bets AI’s Real Value Will Be Won at the Interface

Betaworks thinks the next big opportunity for AI lies in applications, thanks to the groundwork laid by the flood of investment in AI models and infrastructure. To capitalize on this thesis, the venture firm has hosted AI “camps”—theme-based accelerator cohorts supporting early-stage startups—to look for the next AI app unicorn. On Tuesday, it announced the latest batch of companies passing through this program.

This is the most recent camp Betaworks has organized. In 2024, it similarly backed nine startups “building native experiences in AI.” However, it’s more acutely focused on the app layer this time. The former group was startups building products designed from the ground up with AI at their core. Now, the AI camp is centered on the broader category, where users interact with AI.

“We’ve been investing in machine learning for almost a decade at betaworks [sic] — our first camp in 2016, which included Hugging Face, was focused on NLP and conversational interfaces,” John Borthwick, Betaworks managing partner, said in a statement. “After years of compounding value at the foundation and infrastructure layers, it’s thrilling to see the speed and pace of the app layer maturing, offering people and teams apps and tools that serve as superpowers.”

The firm claims the nine new startups it’s now backing are taking advantage of AI’s rapid nature at the foundational level. These companies are building focused and practical products for a clearly defined type of user, not as a generic tool.

Here is the latest cohort to graduate from Betaworks’ AI camp:

Decode

This startup describes itself as a “whiteboard for your ideas that writes software for you.” Its app organizes product requirements, creates wireframes, and generates code using AI, pulling in data from various sources.

Trampoline AI

An AI startup tackling the Request for Proposal response management market. It believes service organizations are struggling to handle complex RFPs. Therefore, it offers an AI platform that automates the response process, reducing the time and manual energy needed, and bolstering win rates through intelligent task management and knowledge base maintenance.

TabTabTab

TabTabTab is the maker of an AI app that resides on your computer instead of in the cloud. Having AI locally eliminates any slow response times. Its solution claims to seamlessly connect “context from screen/clipboard/apps to AI, starting with LLM-powered copy and paste.”

Superposition

The creator of an AI-powered application that helps founders recruit employees. It’s an agent tailored toward the startup community that assists with hire design, candidate matching, and personalized outreach with automated interview scheduling.

Hopper

Aimed at helping manage engineering teams, Hopped develops AI-powered coding tools that assist in ideation and detailed ticketing with technical auditing and organizational context, something it calls “vibe planning.”

Afterimage

Afterimage was founded to help patients and families who felt healthcare providers mistreated them. It has developed a platform to help them understand what happened and to seek a remedy for any medical errors.

JigsawML

An AI-powered cloud management platform, JigsawML uses AI to help visualize and manage enterprise architecture.

NetAssist

This startup aims to make it easier for seniors to use technology, offering “intuitive” voice and text agents that help simplify the online experience. By understanding users’ needs, NetAssist’s platform promises to guide them to solutions, services, and community connections while keeping caregivers in the loop.

Graze Social

Can AI help build better social media? That’s the goal of Graze Social, a startup that provides tools, platforms, and a Bluesky-centric content marketplace for developers to create custom feeds. According to the company, “developers face a high learning curve, community leaders can’t make a living, and organizations lack audience control.”

But where is the AI? Betaworks explains that Graze Social incorporates algorithmic intelligence into feed creation through its tech stack. Doing so “reimagines how content is composed in a decentralized ecosystem.”

All nine startups received $500,000 in funding from Betaworks and its syndicate partners. This recent AI camp, which ran from February to May 2025, was a 13-week program based in New York City that offered participants resources for product development, platform strategy, data science, storytelling, and fundraising.

To qualify, Betaworks wrote that although the camp would be “foundation agnostic,” it was looking for teams “actively selecting and adapting to the foundation layer capabilities with a custom architecture that leverages the foundation models to beat the performance of naive prompting.”

By emphasizing practical, user-centric products, the firm seeks to identify the next wave of successful AI-driven apps that can create a meaningful impact in their respective domains. It contends that we’re only scratching the surface of seeing innovation at the interface level, and there’s more untapped potential in delivering tangible value through innovative applications.

Featured Image: Betaworks startup demo day. Credit: Betaworks