A California venture capital firm and renowned artificial intelligence company have teamed up to establish a new investment fund for machine learning startups.
Anthropic, which just released its “Claude” large language model app on Android, has partnered with Menlo Ventures for the initiative. The US$100 million dollar “Anthology Fund” will invest in early-stage AI developers in the midst of completing their pre-seed, seed and Series A funding rounds. Claude will assist with selecting suitable candidates.
“We thought this was an opportunity for us to do something together,” Menlo partner Tim Tully told TechCrunch, “where we can see the ecosystem and find great companies that are building on Anthropic or AI more broadly.”
Menlo is one of Anthropic’s most substantial investors. The firm just helped the AI developer raise US$750 million in a yet-to-be announced funding round, a reputable source informed TechCrunch.
This fund will be solely funded by Menlo and will provide select developers with US$100,000 cheques. They will also be granted a US$25,000 credit from Anthropic for use of its AI technology. Startups can apply for the working capital and credits using this form.
Matt Murphy of @MenloVentures details their latest partnership with @AnthropicAI to fund AI startups https://t.co/ceDUDc85eo pic.twitter.com/EujsL2WiC3
— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) July 17, 2024
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Almost half of American startup funding last quarter utilized for AI
United States investors have been pumping vast quantities of cash into early-stage tech developers, just like Menlo. More than US$27 billion within merely three months actually. Companies that received portions of this sum are using the technology for a variety of purposes too.
San Francisco’s Cognition AI, creator of the world’s first fully autonomous AI-powered software engineer “Devin,” raised over US$175 million alone.
Suno, a generative artificial intelligence music creation platform, pooled US$125 million together in a Series B funding round this May.
In addition, VERSES AI Inc. (CBOE: VERS) (OTCQB: VRSSF), an up-and-coming AI developer with an office in Los Angeles, raised over US$15 million during the quarter.
VERSES, which focuses on using the technology to gain a deeper understanding of biological processes in nature, was recently recognized for its innovation in the field by the renowned market researcher Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT).
VERSES AI is a sponsor of Mugglehead news coverage
rowan@mugglehead.com
