In June, Menlo Ventures announced $3 billion in new capital across two funds, marking the largest raise in its 50-year history. Menlo Ventures XVII will invest primarily in seed and Series A companies, while Menlo Inflection IV will provide growth capital to startups at Series B and beyond. The new funds will target companies throughout the AI market, from foundational models and infrastructure to enterprise, healthcare and consumer applications. The capital gives the Silicon Valley firm more flexibility to back companies from their earliest days through later funding rounds. Anthropic has become the most prominent company in Menlo’s AI portfolio; the firm first invested in the AI model developer in 2023 and has added to its investment in later rounds. Other AI investments include Lovable, Suno, OpenRouter, Wispr, Fireworks AI, Modal, Skild AI, and Goodfire. Matt Murphy, a partner at Menlo since 2015, has led investments in Anthropic, Lovable, OpenRouter, Harness, Semgrep, and Legora. Before joining Menlo, Murphy spent 15 years as a general partner at Kleiner Perkins, where he was an observer at Google from the firm’s initial investment through its IPO, helped launch the $200 million iFund with Apple, and worked on investments including DocuSign, AppDynamics, Upstart, and Shazam. Murphy said AI companies need more capital than previous generations of software companies, stay private for longer, and