Menlo Ventures合伙人Matt Murphy及其团队周一在一篇博客文章中宣布，该公司已投资人工智能编码初创公司Factory。
Menlo Ventures partner Matt Murphy and his team announced Monday in a blog post that the firm has invested in AI coding startup Factory.
门洛拒绝就其投资金额发表评论，但表示该交易是Factory上个月宣布的最新一轮融资的一部分，估值为50亿美元。一位熟悉该交易的消息人士告诉我们，这笔投资对门罗来说意义重大--而不是象征性的姿态--如果上限上有空间，门罗会投资更多。
Menlo declined to comment on how much it invested but said the deal was part of Factory’s latest funding round announced last month at a $5 billion valuation. A source familiar with the deal told us the investment was significant to Menlo — not a token gesture — and that Menlo would have invested more had there been room on the cap table.
通常情况下，这样的事情不一定是新闻;初创公司通常会延长前几轮以增加新投资者。但上周，Factory联合创始人兼首席执行官马坦·格林伯格（Matan Grinberg）卷入了一场公开的丑闻，他声称自己解雇了RPT Partners公司的投资者克里斯·德格南（Chris Degnan）担任董事会顾问。格林伯格表示，他担心德格南可能与Factory最大的竞争对手Cognition分享了机密信息。这项指控是在Degnan转任Cognition担任首席收入官之后发生的。
Ordinarily, something like this wouldn’t necessarily be news; startups often extend previous rounds to add new investors. But last week, Factory co-founder and CEO Matan Grinberg was embroiled in a very public airing of dirty laundry when he alleged that he had fired investor Chris Degnan of firm RPT Partners from his role as board advisor. Grinberg said he feared Degnan may have shared confidential information with Factory’s biggest competitor, Cognition. The accusation followed Degnan’s move to Cognition as its chief revenue officer.
一位科技行业的名人出柜要么支持德格南，要么谴责工厂，要么反之亦然，但没有人比维诺德·科斯拉更令人惊讶。科斯拉的公司是Factory和Cognition的投资者。但这并没有阻止这位受人尊敬的风险投资者称Factory为绝望的“苦苦挣扎的二级竞争对手”，并指责格林伯格在解雇德格南和质疑他的性格方面撒谎。德格南对格林伯格的说法提出异议，称他辞职了，并且拒绝了格林伯格的竞争工作邀请。
A who’s who of the tech industry came out of the woodwork either to either support Degnan and condemn Factory, or vice versa, but none was more surprising than Vinod Khosla. Khosla’s firm is an investor in both Factory and Cognition. But that didn’t stop the venerable VC from calling Factory a desperate “struggling second tier competitor,” and accusing Grinberg of lying about firing Degnan and impugning his character. Degnan disputed Grinberg’s story, saying he resigned and that he’d rebuffed a competing job offer from Grinberg.
因此，门洛对Factory的全力支持，赞扬了其创始人、技术以及与客户的关系，这不仅仅是Factory帽子上的一块羽毛。这是一个声明，表明工厂并没有处于科斯拉暗示的状态。
So Menlo’s full-throated endorsement of Factory, which praised its founders, its tech, and its relationship with its customers, is more than a feather in Factory’s cap. It’s a statement that Factory is not in the state that Khosla implied it was.
墨菲将他的公司押在了Anthropic上，当时Anthropic似乎也是OpenAI的失败者，此后一直处于热门状态，例如与Lovable和Legora达成了交易。所以现在一些风险投资者称Factory为“下一个Anthropic”。红杉的肖恩·马奎尔（Shaun Maguire）也是Factory的支持者，上周在X上公开支持格林伯格，他似乎对门罗的支持感到兴奋，称该公司“正在流泪”。值得注意的是，Menlo并不是竞争对手Cognition的投资者。
Murphy famously bet his firm on Anthropic back when it appeared to be an also-ran to OpenAI and has been on a hot streak ever since, landing deals with Lovable and Legora, for instance. So now some VCs are calling Factory “the next Anthropic.“Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire, also a Factory backer who came out on X in support of Grinberg last week, appears thrilled with Menlo’s endorsement, saying the firm is “on a tear.” Notably, Menlo is not an investor in competitor Cognition.