Menlo Ventures on Tuesday announced $3 billion in funding for its AI portfolio, the largest in its 50-year history, led specifically by Anthropic. The stake in the model maker is currently worth about $14 billion, according to sources.
If you listen to the Menlo folks, they were gritting their teeth when they preemptively led the model maker’s Series D with a $750 million investment in Anthropic in 2024. At the time, the startup’s valuation quadrupled to $18.4 billion in that round.
The bet itself wasn’t terribly risky, but the means by which the company raised that kind of capital was riskier.
Menlo was an early investor in Anthropic’s Series C before it launched its product. By 2024, long before Claude Code and Claude Mythos, the company was showing signs of success. It had secured a $4 billion deal from Amazon and was attracting keen interest from VCs founded by former OpenAI researchers, including brother CEO Dario Amodei and president Daniela Amodei. The company was an up-and-coming AI company, as are many startups founded by OpenAI alumni that still exist today.
But the way Menlo raised money was truly amazing. In 2024, the venture world was just bouncing back from the post-pandemic VC winter, with giants like SoftBank and Tiger Global still licking their wounds. No one was writing checks for $7.5 billion.
Menlo structured the deal, worth about $500 million, as a special purpose vehicle (SPV), a one-time investment entity created to raise funds from multiple sources for a single transaction. Menlo also contributed $250 million from its own funds and Menlo insiders, sources told Forbes at the time, bringing the total investment to $750 million.
Since then, AI SPVs have become as common as cockroaches, specifically targeting Anthropic. The AI company issued a warning last month, calling all unauthorized SPVs and secondary markets purporting to sell its shares a “scam”.
But the aggressive push has paid off well for investors in Menlo’s approved 2024 deal. Menlo went on to invest in the company’s Series E and F.
Plus, Menlo is launching a $100 million startup fund with Anthropic in 2024, cutely named Anthology. The fund has since grown to close to $250 million in capital to date, sources with knowledge of the fund told TechCrunch. Not only have we supported over 60 companies (providing support such as access to anthropology leaders and credits to Claude), we have already generated a lot of revenue. These include Graphite, acquired by Cursor, and Astrix Security, acquired by Cisco.
This fund allows Menlo to have its finger on the pulse of AI startups, categories, and technologies at an early stage. The VC firm has since built an extensive portfolio of AI investments, including AI stars such as OpenRouter, Higgsfield, Legora, Lovable, OpenEvidence, and others in its portfolio.
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