{"id":83557,"date":"2026-06-23T20:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T20:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/83557\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T20:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T20:01:07","slug":"anthropic-backer-menlo-ventures-raises-3b-in-new-funds-to-back-ai-startups-across-stages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/83557\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropic Backer Menlo Ventures Raises $3B In New Funds To Back AI Startups Across Stages"},"content":{"rendered":"

Venture investor Menlo Ventures<\/a> 1<\/a>\u00a0said Tuesday that it has raised $3 billion in new capital \u2014 the largest new raise in the firm\u2019s 50-year history \u2014 to back AI-focused startups across enterprise, healthcare and consumer sectors.<\/p>\n

The Menlo Park, California-based firm highlighted its early investment in Anthropic<\/a>, which last month overtook<\/a> rival OpenAI<\/a> as the top-valued frontier lab in the world with a staggering $965 billion valuation. While Menlo Ventures\u2019 investment in Anthropic\u2019s Series C round<\/a> was not its first bet on artificial intelligence, the firm described it as its \u201cflag-planting moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AnthropicAnthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei, left, with Menlo Ventures partner Matt Murphy. (Photo courtesy of Menlo Ventures.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe made our first investment in Anthropic in 2023, when the company was pre-product, pre-revenue. By then, ChatGPT was a household name, and many believed the LLM race was already decided. We saw it differently,\u201d the firm wrote in a blog post<\/a> published Tuesday. \u201cIn Dario Amodei<\/a> and his founding team \u2014 arguably the most accomplished researchers in the field \u2014 we saw the rare mix of technical depth and clarity of purpose that defines a category leader. We were convinced there was room for another independent foundation model company, that Anthropic was the team to build it, and that an investment in Anthropic could anchor our broader AI strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The firm went on to lead Anthropic\u2019s Series D<\/a> the following year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat early relationship gave us a rare vantage point on the model layer and on the infrastructure, workflows, and application opportunities forming around it,\u201d the firm said this week.<\/p>\n

Two new funds<\/p>\n

The firm\u2019s new capital is across two funds: Menlo Ventures XVII<\/a>, earmarked for seed and Series A startups, and Menlo Inflection IV<\/a>, a growth fund for Series B and later startups that are \u201calready pulling away from the pack and on their way to becoming the breakout names of the AI era.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with Anthropic, other notable Menlo Ventures investments over the years include Uber<\/a>, Roku<\/a>, Warby Parker<\/a>, Siri<\/a> and Gilead Sciences<\/a>. Anthropic, which has filed plans for a 2026 IPO<\/a>, would be the largest exit to date for one of its portfolio companies by far, with an expected IPO target of $1 trillion or more.<\/p>\n

Related Crunchbase query:<\/p>\n

Related reading:<\/p>\n

Illustration: Dom Guzman<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the
\n Crunchbase Daily. \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venture investor Menlo Ventures 1\u00a0said Tuesday that it has raised $3 billion in new capital \u2014 the largest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[53,4480],"class_list":["post-83557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anthropic","tag-anthropic","tag-unicorn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}