Just 5 months after saying a brand new $100 million fund referred to as Anthology Fund, Menlo Ventures and Anthropic have backed their first 18 startups. And they’re in search of extra.
Menlo says these first 18 had been chosen from 1000’s of candidates. They embody 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 client vitamin app. Plus there are eight extra accepted into this system which might 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 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 and supply them with $25,000 price of credit for Anthropic’s fashions.
Menlo is a significant backer of Anthropic, and this fund helps each get in the midst of the subsequent 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 many greatest traders in Anthropic and big followers of what they’re doing,” Menlo Ventures companion Tim Tully advised TechCrunch in July when this system launched. “We thought this was a possibility for us to do one thing collectively, the place we are able to see the ecosystem and discover nice corporations which might be constructing on Anthropic or AI extra broadly.”
