Menlo Ventures and Anthropic team up on a $100M AI fund

Silicon Valley VC firm Menlo Ventures, one of the biggest investors in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, on Wednesday said the two companies are teaming up to set up a $100 million initiative dubbed “the Anthology Fund” to invest in pre-seed and Series A artificial intelligence companies.

Menlo recently climbed to the top of Anthropic’s list of backers, closing a yet-to-be-announced, over $750 million funding round in the foundation model company, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The capital for the Anthology Fund is a carve-out of Menlo’s latest $1.35 billion vehicle, which the firm raised last November, Matt Murphy, a partner at Menlo Ventures, told TechCrunch.

“We’re one of the biggest investors in Anthropic and huge fans of what they’re doing,” Murphy said. “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.”

The venture firm is essentially leveraging its investment and close relationship with one of the world’s most prominent foundational model companies to identify interesting AI-first startups for future investments.

The Anthology Fund will write checks starting at $100,000 in startups and provide them with $25,000 worth of credits to use Anthropic’s models.

The fund is accepting applications from startups through an online form. Menlo will use the firm’s proprietary machine learning tool to score and rank applications, Murphy said, adding that the diligence process on these companies is expected to be more “lightweight” than for a typical investment by the firm.

Menlo will back any subsequent rounds raised by promising Anthology Fund companies, Murphy said.