Only five months have passed since the announcement The new $100 million fund, called the Anthology Fund, Menlo Ventures and Anthropic backed the first 18 startups. And they're looking for more.

These first 18 were chosen from thousands of applicants, Menlo said. These include startups working on software recruiting; autonomous coding; interpretability research (understanding how models make decisions); fintech compliance and tax implications; radiology image analysis and chart review applications; non-human identity cybersecurity; customer engagement software; and a consumer nutrition app. There are also eight other people accepted into the program who are still classified. Menlo says.

This program is a typical enterprise startup program (e.g. Nvidia's Beginning or Microsoft for startups), an incubator where startups receive redemption credits, educational resources, and interest and investment in starting companies. The fund will write checks of $100,000 or more to startups from seed to Series B and provide them with loans worth $25,000. Anthropic models.

Menlo is a big supporter of Anthropic, and this funding helps them both get into the middle of the next big thing for AI coming in 2025: a focus beyond basic models and AI infrastructure and onto new applications that run on top of them.

“We are one of Anthropic's largest investors and big fans of the work they do,” Menlo Ventures partner Tim Tully told TechCrunch when the program launched in July. “We thought this was an opportunity for us to do something together where we could see the ecosystem and find great companies that are built around Anthropic or AI more broadly.”