Menlo Ventures and Anthropic Launch $100M Anthology Fund, Select First 18 AI Startups

Anthropic, Menlo Select 18 Startups for $100m Anthology Fund

Menlo Ventures, a venture capital firm investing actively in AI startups, has announced the first cohort of 18 companies for the $100 million Anthology Fund, launched in partnership with Anthropic. Companies are selected in various sectors, such as research, finance, healthcare, security, and CRM. Among the eighteen selected companies, eight of them are currently operating in stealth mode. "VCs have largely focused their investments on the foundational layers of AI -- hardware and models. Now, the spotlight is shifting to delivering real-world value through transformative end-user applications," said Deedy Das, general partner at Menlo Ventures. Launched in July 2024, the Anthology Fund is an initiative to use $100 million in capital to back AI-first startups. The fund will invest $100,000 + in seed to expand startups that use Anthropic's AI technology. The fund will also provide selected startups access to Anthropic's latest models, with $25,000 worth of free credits. "For both the team at Menlo and our partners at Anthropic, the Anthology Fund goes beyond investing. We're building a strong community of pioneers who are harnessing Anthropic's technology to demonstrate the tremendous impact AI could have on human lives," read the announcement. Menlo Ventures has been an active investor in Anthropic and participated in the $450 million Series C round last year. In November, Anthropic also announced a $4 billion investment from Amazon. Recently, Menlo Ventures also released a report titled "2024: The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise". The report revealed that AI coding applications are leading the pack when it comes to the value of AI use cases. Support chatbots, enterprise search, and data extraction, followed by this. Earlier this month, both Google and a16z, put forth their visions and trends for startups and businesses in 2025. Google is betting on multimodal AI, agents, enterprise search, and so on. Moreover, Google also said that AI will enhance security systems and that in 2025, AI will help bolster defenses, identify and combat threats while automating manual security tasks and accelerating response times. A16z shared thier 'big ideas for tech in 2025' and they're betting on biotech startups and AI models in healthcare. They also said that 'new UI/UX paradigms will emerge for AI-powered software'. The full list includes ideas from 50 a16z partners.

Menlo Ventures and Anthropic have picked the first 18 startups for their $100M fund | TechCrunch

Just five months after announcing a new $100 million fund called Anthology Fund, Menlo Ventures and Anthropic have backed their first 18 startups. And they are looking for more. Menlo says these first 18 were selected from thousands of applicants. They include startups working on recruiting software; autonomous coding; interpretability research (understanding how models make decisions); fintech compliance and tax apps; radiology image analysis and chart reviewing apps; non-human identify cybersecurity; customer engagement software; and a consumer nutrition app. Plus there are eight more accepted into the program that are still in stealth, Menlo says. This program is something of cross between a typical corporate startup program (like Nvidia's Inception or Microsoft for Startups) where startups get usage credits and educational resources, and an incubator where they get company-building attention and investment. The fund will write checks of $100,000 or more into startups and provide them with $25,000 worth of credits for Anthropic's models. Menlo is a major backer of Anthropic and this fund helps both get in the middle of the next big thing for AI coming in 2025: a focus beyond the foundational models and AI infrastructure and into the new apps that run on top of them. "We're one of the biggest investors in Anthropic and huge fans of what they're doing," Menlo Ventures partner Tim Tully told TechCrunch in July when the program launched. "We thought this was an opportunity for us to do something together, where we can see the ecosystem and find great companies that are building on Anthropic or AI more broadly."