Investment company Menlo Ventures and developer Anthropic launched a $100 million fund earmarked for early stage AI start-ups, with those being backed set to be given cash, advice and $25,000 in credit to use the latter’s most advanced models.

Those receiving cash from the Anthology Fund, Menlo explained, would gain a strong investment partner and have the ability to take advantage of Anthropic’s expertise and research in the AI sector.

The pair are seeking “AI pioneers who harness Anthropic’s cutting-edge technology to redefine what is possible today”, with a view to supporting companies to “reshape industries and improve lives”.

Menlo, which is an investor in Anthropic, noted start-ups did not necessarily need to use Anthropic’s Claude large language model.

However, it went on to claim Claude 3.5 Sonnet was “the best-performing language model in the world” and “we assume the best developers will want to use the best model for their applications”.  

Individual investments will be at least $100,000, with the pair looking for pre-seed, seed and series-A opportunities. The fund is willing to either lead the round or act as a participant.

Menlo noted when it leads a funding round it expects them to be seven-to-ten-year investments.