Menlo Ventures and Anthropic have picked the first 18 startups for their $100M fund

Just five months after announcing a new $100 million fund called Anthology Fund, Menlo Ventures and Anthropic have backed their first 18 startups. And they are looking for more.

Menlo says these first 18 were selected from thousands of applicants. They include startups working on recruiting software; autonomous coding; interpretability research (understanding how models make decisions); fintech compliance and tax apps; radiology image analysis and chart reviewing apps; non-human identity cybersecurity; customer engagement software; and a consumer nutrition app. Plus there are eight more accepted into the program that are still in stealth, Menlo says.

This program is something of a cross between a typical corporate startup program (like Nvidia’s Inception or Microsoft for Startups), where startups get usage credits and educational resources, and an incubator where they get company-building attention and investment. The fund will write checks of $100,000 or more into startups — from pre-seed to Series B — and provide them with $25,000 worth of credits for Anthropic’s models.

Menlo is a major backer of Anthropic, and this fund helps both get in the middle of the next big thing for AI coming in 2025: a focus beyond the foundational models and AI infrastructure and into the new apps that run on top of them.

“We’re one of the biggest investors in Anthropic and huge fans of what they’re doing,” Menlo Ventures partner Tim Tully told TechCrunch in July when the program launched. “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.”