‘A Rare Land-Grab Moment’: Menlo Ventures’ Matt Murphy On The Next Wave of AI And Putting $3B In New Capital To Work

Menlo Ventures has announced a record $3 billion in new capital, split between Menlo Ventures XVII for seed and Series A AI companies and Menlo Inflection IV for Series B and later growth rounds. The move reflects the firm’s growing focus on artificial intelligence, a sector that now dominates its investment thesis after early stakes in Anthropic, Lovable, Suno, OpenRouter, Wispr, Fireworks AI, Modal, Skild AI and Goodfire. Partner Matt Murphy, who joined Menlo in 2015 after a long tenure at Kleiner Perkins, explained that the larger funds give the firm flexibility to support companies from inception through hyper‑growth, allowing it to double down on high‑conviction bets while maintaining a founder‑focused approach. He highlighted the shift from Phase 1 (model selection) to Phase 2 (scale and optimization) of the AI market, noting that infrastructure, multi‑model tools and industry‑specific applications are all ripe for investment, but that bottlenecks such as rapid production, security and compute capacity remain critical challenges for founders.

(Source：Crunchbase)