Just 5 months after asserting a brand 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 have been chosen from 1000’s 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 identification cybersecurity; buyer engagement software program; and a shopper diet app. Plus there are eight extra accepted into this system which can be 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 assets, 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 Series 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 midst of the following huge 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 many greatest buyers in Anthropic and large followers of what they’re doing,” Menlo Ventures accomplice Tim Tully instructed TechCrunch in July when this system launched. “We thought this was a chance for us to do one thing collectively, the place we will see the ecosystem and discover nice firms which can be constructing on Anthropic or AI extra broadly.”
