Anthropic jumped to a revenue rate of $47 billion in May, up from $9 billion in 2025. It’s the kind of growth Menlo Ventures’ Matt Murphy says he’s never seen in 25 years of investing, not in the Internet wave, not in mobile, not in the first cloud boom. Menlo led Anthropic’s $500 million Series D, and Murphy has had a front-row seat as the company has grown from a pre-launch and revenue play to one of the most valuable startups out there.

In this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Julie Bort talks to Murphy about backing Anthropic before anyone else, why a big model was never the point, and what’s driving the fastest-growing startups he’s ever seen.

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