Menlo Ventures, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that is one of the largest investors in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, announced on Wednesday that the two firms are teaming up to launch a $100 million initiative called the “Anthology Fund” to invest in pre-seed and Series A-stage artificial intelligence companies.
Menlo recently topped Anthropic's list of backers, closing a yet-to-be-announced funding round of more than $750 million for the foundation model company, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The Anthology Fund's capital is carved out of Menlo's most recent investment vehicle, $1.35 billion, which it raised in November, Matt Murphy, partner at Menlo Ventures, told TechCrunch.
“We're one of the largest investors in Anthropic and we're big fans of what they're doing,” Murphy said, “and we thought this was an opportunity for us to do something together, where we can look at the ecosystem and find some great companies that are building on top of Anthropic and AI.”
The venture firm is essentially leveraging its investments and close relationships with some of the world’s leading foundational model companies to identify interesting AI-first startups for future investment.
The Anthology Fund will issue checks of more than $100,000 to startups and provide $25,000 in credits to use Anthology's model.
The fund accepts applications from startups through an online form, and Menlo will score and rank the applications using its proprietary machine learning tools, Murphy said, adding that the due diligence process for these companies is expected to be “lighter” than the firm's typical investments.
Menlo will back any future capital raised by promising anthology fund companies, Murphy said.