Why We Invested in Anthropic
Last week I wrote that we, a firm known mostly for its focus on B2B SaaS, have invested in startups working on autonomous navigation for spacecraft, personalized cancer vaccines, and micro-drones that hunt mosquitoes (stealth), among other companies that significantly expand the scope of what software investing meant traditionally.
Today, I’m excited to share that we participated in Anthropic’s Series G.
A VC that has “early stage” encoded in its freaking *name* and that prides itself on the craft of seed investing, participating in a financing at a $380 billion valuation?! You might wonder if we’ve lost our minds.
How it happened
The opportunity came about when our portfolio company Vercept was acquired by Anthropic in January/February, and we got the chance to not only roll over our position but double down. The timing made the decision easier than it might sound. Anthropic had just disclosed that its revenue run-rate had grown from $1B to $9B over the course of 2025, an unprecedented pace at this scale. We’d also observed that since the release of Opus 4.5 and 4.6, developers had been switching to Claude in droves, and it helped that we experienced the capability jumps firsthand. On top of that, there were rumors about a much more capable model in the pipeline (since announced as Mythos).
What does this mean for our strategy?
We’re not turning Point Nine into a late stage fund. And we’re not changing our name to two point zero. ;-) We continue to focus on early stage investing. This is an exception, because of a special opportunity to invest in a one-of-a-kind company.
In early April, Anthropic announced it had crossed $30 billion in annualized revenue. A few weeks later, it reportedly crossed $40B. As crazy as it sounds, Anthropic’s revenue would be even higher if the company had more compute, since the market for the highest-intelligence tokens is supply-constrained. To say that these numbers are “exceptional” would be an understatement. It’s unheard of in the history of capitalism.
What better company to make an exception for?