Tiger Global

Menlo Ventures Raises $3B Fund Backed by Anthropic Stake

Menlo Ventures announced a $3 billion fundraise, the largest in its 50-year history, driven largely by gains in its AI portfolio—most notably its stake in Anthropic, which sources say is now worth about $14 billion. Menlo made a headline-grabbing $750 million bet on Anthropic in 2024, structured with roughly $500 million as an SPV and about $250 million from Menlo’s fund and insiders. The firm later participated in Anthropic’s Series E and F and launched a $100 million ‘Anthology’ startup fund with Anthropic that has since deployed closer to $250 million and backed 60+ startups, producing exits such as Graphite (acquired by Cursor) and Astrix Security (acquired by Cisco). The raise underscores Menlo’s transition into a prominent AI-focused investor and the proliferation of AI SPVs in the market.

Voice Summit Highlights Support, Dictation, and New Voice Models

At the Cerebral Valley Voice Summit in San Francisco (May 8, 2026), voice-startup leaders and investors discussed the current state and near-term trajectory of voice computing. Sierra CEO Bret Taylor highlighted a $950M funding round valuing Sierra at $15.8B. Wispr Flow showcased rapid growth and advances in dictation that learn punctuation and user patterns. OpenAI signaled upcoming technical progress when its head of realtime AI, Justin Uberti, previewed a suite of new voice models designed to reason and follow conversational context. Speakers debated use cases — customer support and workplace efficiency vs. consumer companions — and noted current reliance on cascaded TTS/STT pipelines while anticipating voice-to-voice model improvements. The summit was co-hosted by Eric Newcomer, Max Child and James Wilsterman and sponsored by Baseten, Felicis, Nebius, AssemblyAI and Weekend.

Sierra Raises $950M to Own Enterprise AI

Sierra, the AI startup cofounded by OpenAI chair Bret Taylor and former Google executive Clay Bavor, raised $950 million in a Series E that values the company at $15.8 billion post-money. The round was led by Tiger Global and Google’s GV, with participation from Benchmark, Sequoia, Greenoaks and other existing investors. Sierra sells AI customer-service agents built on foundational models (including OpenAI and Anthropic) and uses a “constellation of models” with proprietary fine-tuned layers. The company reported topping $150 million in ARR in eight quarters and serving more than 40% of the Fortune 50, including customers such as Prudential, Cigna, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Rocket Mortgage. Bret Taylor said Sierra will stay private for now with an IPO “definitely in our future,” and he forecasted a market correction that will leave market leaders intact.