Matt Murphy

Murphy earned an electrical engineering degree at Tufts and an MBA at Stanford. He worked in networking business development and product management at Sun Microsystems, then led product management at Netboost, which Intel acquired.⁠[1]

Before Menlo, he spent about fifteen years as a general partner at Kleiner Perkins and served as a Google board observer. His investing record includes AppDynamics, Shazam, Upstart, Egnyte and DataStax.⁠[1][2]

Murphy helped launch iFund, Kleiner Perkins’ collaboration with Apple to support iPhone and iOS applications. Apple’s March 6, 2008 announcement put the fund’s initial size at $100 million.⁠[2][3]

Menlo announced Murphy’s appointment as Managing Director on June 11, 2015, highlighting his experience in mobile applications and data-center infrastructure.⁠[2]

The $100 million Anthology FundAnthology FundAnthology Fund is a $100 million AI investment initiative launched by Menlo Ventures and Anthropic in 2024 and financed by Menlo. It backs early-stage AI companies with capital, Anthropic resources and company-building support, with scope for follow-on investments.Open the full entry launched on July 17, 2024, financed by Menlo in partnership with Anthropic. In the announcement, Murphy described combining Menlo’s company-building experience with Anthropic’s technology to support AI founders.⁠[4]

Murphy and Deedy DasDeedy DasDeedy Das, also known as Debarghya Das, is a partner at Menlo Ventures investing in AI, infrastructure and enterprise software. Previously an engineer at Facebook and Google and an early builder of Glean and Glean Assistant, he helped launch the Anthology Fund with Anthropic.Open the full entry announced Menlo’s lead role in OpenRouter’s $40 million Series A after an earlier Anthology Fund investment. A subsequent account dated the Series A to May 2025 and identified Murphy as a director and Das as a board observer.⁠[5][6]

Following OpenRouter’s announced agreement to be acquired by Stripe, Murphy and Das reviewed Menlo’s investments from seed through Series B and discussed the role of unified model access and intelligent routing.⁠[6]

On October 5, 2026, Menlo announced participation in Factory’s latest financing in an article co-authored by Murphy, Derek Xiao, Sam Borja and Sabrina Lu. It disclosed no investment amount. The rationale emphasized extending AI development across planning, review, testing, security, documentation and coordination, with shared enterprise context and governance.⁠[7]

The same article estimated that the AI coding market had grown from $550 million to $4 billion and then beyond $30 billion in two years, approaching half of AI application spending. Its authors argued that opportunities extended beyond code generation to the rest of software development.⁠[7]

Murphy focuses on AI infrastructure and enterprise software. In a public interview, he emphasized differentiated market insight, product-market fit, execution, self-reflection and the ability to recruit strong teams as investment criteria.⁠[1][8]

Menlo’s current biography lists investments including Anthropic, Lovable, Harness, Carta, LegoraLegoraLegora is a legal AI company founded in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2023, originally named Leya. Its platform combines internal documents, legal information and AI agents to support research, review, drafting and collaboration for law firms and in-house legal teams, with integrations including Microsoft Word.Open the full entry, Benchling and Semgrep. He also co-chairs Stanford’s Engineering Venture Fund.⁠[1]

Firm profile: https://menlovc.com/team/matt-murphy/ (opens in a new window). X: https://x.com/mmurph (opens in a new window). LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-murphy-0415543/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]