Anthropic’s recent growth has forced investors to reassess competition among AI startups. According to Matt Murphy, partner at Menlo Ventures, the company reached a $47 billion revenue run rate by May, up from $9 billion in 2025. Murphy says he has never seen growth at this pace in his 25 years of investing — not during the internet era, mobile, or the first cloud boom.
Early risk-taking and strategic backers
Menlo Ventures led Anthropic’s $500 million Series D round. On TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosted by Julie Bort, Murphy described why Menlo backed Anthropic when the company was still pre-revenue and the deal did not fit neatly into any single fund at the firm. He also cited the involvement of large strategic investors, including Google and Amazon, as an early positive signal.
Model versus platform: where the real advantage lies
Murphy argues that the underlying model was never the company’s primary moat. Instead, Anthropic built layers on top of the model — notably Claude Code, MCP, and Claude Skills — turning a strong model into a broader platform. Those product and tooling additions are what, in Murphy’s view, created a harder-to-replicate competitive position.
Controversy and messaging around Mythos
The discussion touched on the backlash surrounding Anthropic’s Mythos rollout. Murphy pushed back on the characterization that Mythos was chiefly a marketing exercise rather than a safety-oriented initiative, defending its role within Anthropic’s product suite.
Faster growth across the sector and what it means
Murphy singled out companies such as Lovable and Legora as growing faster than any startups he has seen in the past 25 years. That pace forces founders and investors to adapt: market reactions and scale-up timelines have accelerated, making long-term planning and competitiveness more challenging.
Why this matters
Anthropic’s trajectory illustrates that success in AI increasingly depends not only on model quality but on how rapidly and comprehensively a company can build products, developer tools, and a platform around that model. For investors and founders, the stakes are higher: early strategic choices — investor mix, product roadmaps, and public communication — are becoming more determinative of who wins in this faster-moving market.
In the full podcast episode, Murphy provides more detail on Menlo’s early decision to back Anthropic and on the implications of the company’s current growth rate for the broader market.
