Founded in 1976 by Bell Labs engineer H. DuBose Montgomery on Sand Hill Road, Menlo Ventures is a Menlo Park institution — but it has reinvented itself around a single conviction: AI. The firm's founding belief was that the most impactful companies begin building before the market knows how to value them. Nothing illustrates that better than Anthropic: Menlo first backed the company in 2023, pre-product and pre-revenue, led its $750 million Series D in December 2023, and has invested in every round since, putting roughly $1 billion to work in total — a stake now reportedly worth about $14 billion as Anthropic approaches a trillion-dollar valuation.

Overview and thesis

Menlo's mantra is "when we invest, we're invested" — the team reorganised the entire firm around AI more than three years ago, recruiting deeply technical investors and conducting primary research across the AI stack. Today it is "ALL IN on AI", backing everything from frontier models and infrastructure to AI-native applications. Its annual State of Generative AI in the Enterprise reports — estimating enterprise genAI spend at $37 billion in 2025 (up 3.2x year-on-year) and consumer AI spend at $40 billion in 2026 — have become a reference point for the whole industry.

Sectors and stages

Coverage spans AI infrastructure, foundation models, enterprise SaaS, healthcare AI, consumer AI, cybersecurity, fintech and robotics. The firm invests from seed through growth, with a two-fund structure matching the strategy: Menlo Ventures XVII for seed to Series A, and Menlo Inflection IV for Series B and beyond.

Fund size

On 23 June 2026 — its 50th anniversary — Menlo announced $3 billion in new capital, the largest raise in the firm's history and one of the biggest AI-focused fundraises of the year. In July 2024 it also launched the $100 million Menlo Anthology Fund in partnership with Anthropic to back seed-to-expansion AI startups.

Notable portfolio

Anthropic is the defining position — the single largest investment in firm history — but Menlo's portfolio spans the AI stack, from infrastructure and observability to frontier applications, plus long-standing winners across enterprise software and security.

Partners and team

Partner Matt Murphy has been a public face of the AI strategy, arguing that "many of the defining AI companies of the next decade have yet to be built." The firm deliberately recruited investors with deep technical, product and operating backgrounds to match its AI-era positioning.

Programs and resources

Beyond the Anthology Fund partnership with Anthropic, Menlo's "Menlo Research" publishing engine — the State of AI reports across enterprise, healthcare and consumer — gives portfolio founders and the broader ecosystem data-driven market intelligence few firms can match.

Why it matters for founders

Menlo is the firm that bet $1 billion on Anthropic when ChatGPT looked like the end of the story — and turned it into $14 billion of conviction. For AI founders, that means a partner with genuine AI fluency, research the whole market reads, and a two-fund structure that can lead your seed round and keep leading all the way to hypergrowth. If you are building anywhere in the AI stack, this is now one of the best-funded specialist teams on Sand Hill Road.