Menlo Ventures recently announced the firm has raised $1.35 billion in new capital that will be invested by Menlo’s flagship venture fund Menlo XVI and Menlo Inflection III and their affiliated funds, with a mandate in investing in promising technology companies leading the AI transformation.
Launched in 1976, Menlo Ventures has a reputation as an expert early-stage investor and made bets on Uber, Roku, and Siri long before they became ubiquitous. And in the new AI era, the firm has become recognized for deep technical expertise, industry connectivity, and an impressive AI portfolio.
More recently, the firm brought on partners Joff Redfern (the former CPO of Atlassian); well-known consumer investor Amy Wu (who joins Shawn Carolan in leading Menlo’s consumer investments); and Tim Tully (the previous CTO of Splunk).
KEY QUOTES:
“With this $1.35 billion in new capital, we’re making a commitment to support the forthcoming generation of AI startups. Focusing on AI, we will continue on our mission to identify outlier companies before they are obvious, to back and build category leaders, and to support them as they grow. With their immense potential, early-stage AI startups embody the prospect of revolutionary innovation. The best among them will forever change the technology landscape and the human experience.”
— Venky Ganesan, partner at Menlo Ventures
“Generative AI represents a seismic shift that will add trillions of dollars in value to the global economy. Menlo Ventures will help write the next chapter.”
“We’ve built a team and created an ecosystem around the firm designed to attract the best and brightest in the AI domain to partner with Menlo. When we talk to entrepreneurs, the fact that we’ve backed people like Edo Liberty at Pinecone, Dario Amodei at Anthropic, and Jyoti Bansal at Harness is a huge draw. And we’ve strategically built our team, hiring deeply technical partners with operating experience who provide valuable guidance to our portfolio.”
— Matt Murphy, partner at Menlo Ventures
“It’s an exciting time to be in VC, particularly as an investor in consumer technology. The entire tech sector is buzzing with excitement for what’s to come. AI will introduce entirely new categories of products and supercharge existing ones. AI will help us feel more creative, more connected, more productive, and more powerful. The potential is profound.”
— Shawn Carolan, partner at Menlo Ventures – who leads the firm’s expanded consumer practice
