Simply 5 months after saying a new $100 million fund referred to as Anthology Fund, Menlo Ventures and Anthropic have backed their first 18 startups. And they’re on the lookout for extra.
Menlo says these first 18 had been chosen from hundreds of candidates. They embrace startups engaged on recruiting software program; autonomous coding; interpretability analysis (understanding how fashions make choices); fintech compliance and tax apps; radiology picture evaluation and chart reviewing apps; non-human id cybersecurity; buyer engagement software program; and a shopper vitamin app. Plus there are eight extra accepted into this system which are nonetheless in stealth, Menlo says.
This program is one thing of a cross between a typical company startup program (like Nvidia’s Inception or Microsoft for Startups), the place startups get utilization credit and academic sources, and an incubator the place they get company-building consideration and funding. The fund will write checks of $100,000 or extra into startups — from pre-seed to Collection B — and supply them with $25,000 price of credit for Anthropic’s fashions.
Menlo is a serious backer of Anthropic, and this fund helps each get in the course of the following large factor for AI coming in 2025: a spotlight past the foundational fashions and AI infrastructure and into the brand new apps that run on prime of them.
“We’re one of the biggest investors in Anthropic and huge fans of what they’re doing,” Menlo Ventures associate Tim Tully informed TechCrunch in July when this system 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.”
