How do I run multiple background commands in bash in a single line?

I normally run multiple commands with something like this:

sleep 2 && sleep 3

or

sleep 2 ; sleep 3

but what if I want to run them both in the background from one command line command?

sleep 2 & && sleep 3 &

doesn't work. And neither does replacing && with ;

Is there a way to do it?

Exactly how do you want them to run? If you want them to be started in the background and run sequentially, you would do something like this:

{ sleep 2; sleep 3; } &

If you want sleep 3 to run only if sleep 2 succeeds, then:

sleep 2 && sleep 3 &

If, on the other hand, you would like them to run in parallel in the background, you can instead do this:

sleep 2 & sleep 3 &

And the two techniques could be combined, such as:

{ sleep 2; echo first finished; } & { sleep 3; echo second finished; } &

Bash being bash, there's often a multitude of different techniques to accomplish the same task, although sometimes with subtle differences between them.

You need to add some parens in your last version --

(sleep 2 &) && (sleep 3 &)

or this also works --

(sleep 2 &) ; (sleep 3 &)

to run multiple background command you need to add & end of each command. ex: (command1 &) && (command2 &) && (command3 &)