Apply to Betaworks’ Fall AI Camp: Interfaces

TL;DR

The next Betaworks Camp theme is Interfaces.

We’re looking for early-stage startups that are rethinking the human-machine boundary through new interface paradigms: voice-native tools, ambient agents, novel input/output flows, multi-modal or invisible interfaces, sophisticated prompt-based interactions. We want to see products with a strong opinion, that treat the interface as fundamental.

If you’re designing how AI is experienced, not just what it can do, we want to talk. Apply here.

From “app layer” to “interface layer”

In past Camps, we explored agentic systems, native applications, and the fast-shifting AI stack. We’ve seen products that blurred the line between tools and teammates — systems with cognition, memory, even initiative. We find ourselves often returning to the same question: how should people interact with artificial intelligence?

That’s why we’re excited to see new teams that treat interface as leverage…interface, not as an afterthought, but as the product surface itself.

This Camp builds on everything we’ve learned but it sharpens the focus. We’re looking for novelty at the point of interaction.

Why now?

We believe this is a pivotal moment for interface innovation and recent technical unlocks have transformed what’s possible at the interaction layer:

• Multimodal models blur input and output across media in the same inference space
• Real-time voice enables natural language-as-interface in a way distinct from pure text mode and is still underadopted primarily because the fundamentals of the possible best experiences are still being discovered
• Memory and long context unlock persistent experiences
• Agent orchestration, and multi-agent orchestration, allow for multi-step, long running, fault tolerant, and adaptive workflows
• Ambient and spatial hardware open new canvases for interaction

These developments shift the bottleneck from what AI can do to how users experience it. The opportunity now is to design interfaces that couldn’t exist before AI and that feel inevitable once used. As Mary Meeker put it recently: “The question isn’t whether platforms or specialists win — it’s who can abstract the right layer, own the interface, and capture the logic of work itself.”

What are we looking for?

We’re interested in products where the interface is the invention. Here are some attributes and examples…

🧠 Sophisticated Prompting as Interface

Prompting is UX for AI systems. We want to see:

• The power of the most advanced LM systems is often able to obfuscate poor prompting. We want to see novel techniques, strategies that push capabilities, use tools in unexpected ways, and are aware of the computing environments they exist in. For example prompts that create behavior that presumes a complex, agentic system, self-reflective, retrying, or adaptive prompts.
• How good are your prompts, really? What makes them better than other companies? How thoughtful are you about maximizing performance?

⚡ Speed and Throughput as Design Constraints

• Instantaneous feel: Meeting you where you are with perceived latency close to zero, systems that are latency-aware UIs: creating seamless interactions while models think
• High-throughput loops: Multimodal, information-dense outputs (can you generate visuals instead of reams of text that models are happy to generate, or audio, etc)
• Is your client optimized in a way where it isn’t a bottleneck for interaction? (if there is one)

✨ Delight-inducing Interfaces

Yes, we want to know, “How does it feel?”

• Experience design as moat: Interfaces that go beyond functionality to actually feel good, and that reward intuition and mastery
• Sensorially rich UIs: Visual, audio, and haptic design that invites emotion, systems that spark curiosity, exploration, and delight

👀 Interfaces That Aren’t (Just) Interfaces

We’re especially excited by interfaces that are:

• Invisible or ambient: Assistants that observe, infer, and act
• Embedded and ephemeral: UIs that come and go based on context (if you’re making something that is a low latency spontaneous interface with diffusion LMs let us know)
• Rethought primitives: Space, identity, or memory as first order objects that can be manipulated by AI systems

This Camp is for teams that believe the next major shift isn’t just in the models, it’s in how we experience what they can do.

How Camp works

Camp is a 13-week, in-person program at Betaworks in NYC. International companies are welcome to apply but must be willing to relocate to New York during the program. Participating companies receive:

• Up to $500K in investment
• Support from experts in product, GTM, design, business operations, and fundraising
• Weekly workshops, founder roundtables, pitch practice and speed-dating with investors
• Physical office space in NYC’s Meatpacking District (a block from the Whitney Museum and The High Line)
• A capstone Demo Day in front of a room of high-quality investors and innovators

Build the interface layer of AI

We’re not looking for wrappers. We’re looking for windows into the future — interfaces that engage and surprise us with their novelty, and disappear when they should.

👉 Apply to Betaworks AI Camp: Interfaces