- Menlo Ventures has raised $3 billion across two new funds, its largest raise in 50 years, split between an early-stage vehicle and a growth fund for companies scaling at Series B and beyond.
- The raise is backed by an Anthropic stake now worth approximately $14 billion, after the firm first backed the AI company in 2023, when it was pre-product and pre-revenue.
- Menlo is deploying capital across the full AI stack, from foundation model infrastructure to enterprise and consumer applications, with portfolio companies including Lovable, Suno, Axiom, Goodfire, and Skild AI.
Menlo Ventures announced $3 billion in new capital, its largest raise in 50 years. The money is split across two funds: Menlo Ventures XVII for seed and Series A rounds, and Menlo Inflection IV for companies at Series B and beyond.
According to Bloomberg, Menlo has put roughly $1 billion into Anthropic over the years. Its stake is now worth approximately $14 billion. That return is why this raise was sized this way.
The firm first backed Anthropic in 2023, when the company had no product, no revenue, and most of the market had already written off the foundation model race as decided. Then, in 2024, Menlo went further. It led Anthropic’s $750 million Series D, quadrupling the startup’s valuation to $18.4 billion at the time.
The structure of that deal was unconventional even by Silicon Valley standards. Menlo put roughly $500 million through a special-purpose vehicle, and contributed the remaining $250 million from its own fund and from firm insiders.
“AI is creating one of the largest technology platform shifts we’ll see in this lifetime. What makes this moment unique is the speed and breadth of the change. But it’s still very early — incredibly early — and many of the defining AI companies of the next decade have yet to be built. These funds give us the capital and flexibility to partner with founders from company formation through hypergrowth,” says Matt Murphy, partner at Menlo Ventures, who has led the firm’s AI strategy since it reorganised around the sector more than three years ago.
From one bet to an ecosystem
The Anthropic relationship did not stop at the Series D. In July 2024, Menlo and Anthropic jointly launched the $100 million Anthology Fund, modelled on Apple and Kleiner Perkins’ 2008 iFund, to back early-stage startups building on Anthropic technology. What started at $100 million has grown considerably.
The fund has deployed approximately $250 million across more than 60 companies, with early exits including acquisitions by Cursor and Cisco. In practice, Anthology functions as Menlo’s early-warning system: a way to see where AI applications are getting traction before they become obvious to everyone else.
The wider portfolio covers every layer of the stack. At the infrastructure level, Menlo has backed Axiom, Chai Discovery, Goodfire, Neon, OpenRouter, and Skild AI. At the application level, it led Lovable’s Series B, the Swedish vibe-coding platform now valued at $6.6 billion, alongside bets on Suno, OpenEvidence, and Wispr Flow.
“Strong portfolios attract strong founders. That’s the compounding power of a best-in-class AI portfolio. Every company we back makes the whole network smarter, and that edge flows to every founder in the portfolio. In today’s market, the best AI founders have their choice of investors; being close to the companies defining the category is an advantage that capital alone can’t buy,” adds Venky Ganesan, partner at Menlo Ventures.
Raising into a crowded room
The capital market Menlo is raising into has changed dramatically since 2023.
Kleiner Perkins closed $3.5 billion across two AI-focused funds in March 2026, up from $2 billion less than two years earlier. Andreessen Horowitz raised more than $15 billion across six funds in early 2026 — over 18% of all US venture capital raised in 2025. Sequoia raised approximately $7 billion for its expansion strategy fund, nearly double its comparable 2022 vehicle. At $3 billion, Menlo is not competing on scale.
That makes the dual-fund structure worth examining. Menlo has spent three years positioning itself as an early-stage contrarian: the firm that backs companies before the market catches on. But Inflection IV is a growth vehicle for Series B rounds and beyond, which puts it in the same room as the biggest funds in the world chasing the same deals.
The 50-year history does add something real. Menlo backed Siri before voice interfaces were mainstream, Hotmail before consumer web apps had found mass audiences, Roku before streaming reshaped entertainment, and Uber when ridesharing was still an experiment in one city.
“Being early has always been part of Menlo’s DNA. The biggest success stories never look obvious at the outset. To be a good early-stage investor, you have to imagine a market before it exists, understand how technology solves the pain, and help founders build toward it. We embrace first principles. The approach roots our conviction in identifying outlier opportunities before their potential becomes obvious,” concludes Shawn Carolan, partner at Menlo Ventures.
Menlo now manages more than $8.5 billion in capital across a portfolio that includes more than 85 public companies and over 170 exits. The question beneath the $3 billion headline is whether the next fund cycle requires finding another Anthropic or whether the firm can build on what it already owns.
