Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast Anthropic, Glean & OpenRouter: How AI Moats Are Built with Deedy Das of Menlo Ventures
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Nov 14, 2025 
Deedy Das, a Partner at Menlo Ventures and former Glean operator, shares his insights on the fast-evolving world of AI infrastructure and investment strategies. He discusses Glean's impressive journey to a $7B valuation and examines the competitive landscape between Anthropic and OpenAI. Das reveals his investment thesis on innovative companies like OpenRouter and the strategic importance of products such as Claude Code, illustrating how AI is reshaping enterprise software and the future of engineering.
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Coding Remains A Frontier For Model Differentiation
- Consumer model improvements yield diminishing new-user returns, while coding still has a vast quality frontier.
- Investing in model quality is more directly revenue-driving in developer and coding markets.
Run Partner Funds Outside Core Corp Venture
- Use an external, flexible fund model for partner-backed programs to avoid corporate-VC misalignment.
- Keep program investments broad and founder-friendly, from small checks to larger leads.
Interpretability Is Critical For High-Stakes Models
- Mechanistic interpretability seeks to open black-box models by understanding internal weights and circuits.
- That transparency becomes essential as models take on higher-stakes, societally important decisions.