Menlo Ventures raises $3B, largest in 50-year history, all-in on AI startups across stack

Menlo Ventures announced $3 billion in new capital on June 23, marking the venture firm's largest fundraising haul in its 50-year history. The funds are split between Menlo Ventures XVII (seed and Series A) and Menlo Inflection IV (Series B and growth), backing AI startups across infrastructure, frontier models, and AI-native applications in enterprise, healthcare, and consumer markets. The fundraise was anchored by the firm's early bet on Anthropic, now valued at ~$965 billion—making Menlo's stake worth nearly $14 billion after investing $500 million across multiple rounds.

Menlo's conviction in AI conviction paid off spectacularly: the firm invested $500 million in Anthropic during its Series C in 2024 when the company was pre-product and many thought the LLM race was settled. That "bet-the-firm" moment, as partner Shawn Carolan termed it, is now supercharging the firm's capital-raising ability and clout. Beyond Anthropic, Menlo co-created the Anthology Fund with Anthropic in 2024, a $100 million initiative that has deployed ~$250 million to 60+ AI startups and produced early exits (Graphite → Cursor; Astrix Security → Cisco), building Menlo's portfolio reputation across the AI stack.

With $8.5 billion under management, Menlo is now positioned to deploy capital at scale across both early-stage and growth-stage AI companies. The firm controls a network spanning Abnormal AI, Anthropic, Axiom, Carta, Suno, Uber, Roku, and others. For founders and AI infrastructure teams, Menlo's $3B fundraise signals sustained appetite for backing "defining AI companies of the next decade"—particularly across compute, inference, data layers, and vertical AI applications where the firm has already built conviction and portfolio density.