Anthropic, Glean & OpenRouter: How AI Moats Are Built with Deedy Das of Menlo Ventures

Deedy Das, Partner at Menlo Ventures, returns to Latent Space to discuss his journey from Glean to venture capital, the explosive rise of Anthropic, and how AI is reshaping enterprise software and coding. From investing in Anthropic early on when they had no revenue to managing the $100M Ontology Fund, Das shares insider perspectives on the fastest-growing software company in history and what's next for AI infrastructure, research investing, and the future of engineering.

We cover Glean’s rise from “boring” enterprise search to a $7B AI-native company, Anthropic's meteoric rise, the strategic decisions behind products like Claude Code, and why market share in enterprise AI is shifting dramatically. Das explains his investment thesis on research companies like Goodfire, Prime Intellect, and OpenRouter and how the Anthology Fund is quietly seeding the next wave of AI infra, research, and devtools.

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Introduction and Deedy's Return to Latent Space
• 00:01:20 Glean's Journey: From Boring Enterprise Search to $7B Valuation
• 00:15:37 Anthropic's Meteoric Rise and Market Share Dynamics
• 00:17:50 Claude Artifacts and Product Innovation
• 00:41:20 The Anthology Fund: Investing in the Anthropic Ecosystem
• 00:48:01 Goodfire and Mechanistic Interpretability
• 00:51:25 Prime Intellect and Distributed AI Training
• 00:53:40 OpenRouter: Building the AI Model Gateway
• 01:13:36 The Stargate Project and Infrastructure Arms Race
• 01:18:14 The Future of Software Engineering and AI Coding