Yahoo Finance Anthropic and Menlo Ventures Partner on $100 Million AI Fund
(Bloomberg) -- Anthropic is assisting Menlo Ventures with a new $100 million fund for artificial intelligence startups — and its chatbot, Claude, will recommend potential deals.
Menlo Ventures’ Anthology Fund, the latest entrant in a crowded field of new AI backers, is for companies that are using Anthropic’s Claude AI models to build their products. Menlo Ventures, which is one of Anthropic’s investors, will supply all the capital for the fund, with investments starting at $100,000 for early-stage companies, the firm announced Wednesday. Anthropic won’t take a stake in the companies, but will provide networking opportunities and credits for using Claude.
The alliance with Anthropic is meant to help Menlo Ventures find more AI startups to invest in, while building their relationship with Anthropic, Menlo Ventures Partner Matt Murphy told Bloomberg News in an interview. It will also make clear externally what the venture firm is looking for, he said. Companies participating in the fund will not be expected to only use Anthropic’s AI models.
“I think it’s great for us, it’s great for Anthropic, and great for entrepreneurs,” said Murphy, who is leading the fund along with other Menlo Ventures partners including Tim Tully and Amy Wu. Companies can apply for the fund online, and Anthropic’s Claude chatbot will play a small role in recommending which startups the fund should focus on, he said.
The fund has echoes of the OpenAI Startup Fund, which is investing $175 million in AI companies, and which is backed by OpenAI’s biggest investor, Microsoft.
Anthropic’s fund will invest in startups that are focused on several areas, such as those making tools for trust and safety in AI — topics that the company has emphasized since its founding in 2021. It will also look for companies applying AI in original ways in fields like healthcare or cyber security.
Anthropic aims to help the portfolio startups by offering early access to new AI models and holding events they can attend, as well as offering access to President Daniela Amodei and Chief Product Officer Mike Krieger, who was also a co-founder of Instagram. Additionally, companies that receive investments will get $25,000 in credit to use on Anthropic’s AI models.
“The thing that I think makes us a little bit unique is the ability to both access funds but then also work closely with folks who are not necessarily that much further in the journey than some of these startup founders,” Amodei said, pointing out that she and her co-founders “remember what it was like to be startup founders with little resources not that long ago.”
Anthropic will not get a stake in any of the companies that receive investments, but it could look to those participating in the fund as potential acquisition targets in the future (the San Francisco-based startup has not yet purchased any companies).
Murphy said that the Anthology Fund will aim to build a strong community of tech entrepreneurs. However, he sees generative AI — which can do things like take a written prompt and respond with coherent text or images — growing much more rapidly than the mobile ecosystem did.
“We see across our entire portfolio that every company is deploying generative AI to some extent,” Murphy said. “This is moving 10x faster than mobile did, maybe 100x faster.”
--With assistance from Shirin Ghaffary.
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