Derek Xiao

I spend most of my time thinking about AI infrastructure and applications, with investments including Anthropic, Eve, and Neon.

September 2025

AI’s UI Problem Is Actually A New Era of Software

AI apps look the same, but only because the real innovation is happening under the hood: the logical scaffolding that turns prompts into automation.

July 2025

2025 Mid-Year LLM Market Update: Foundation Model Landscape & Economics

Model API spending has surged from $3.5 billion to $8.4 billion in six months, and a new enterprise LLM market leader has emerged in Anthropic.

March 2025

Menlo's Investment In Graphite: Code Review For The AI Age

Graphite is an AI code review platform that helps engineering teams ship quality code faster.

February 2025

Navigating The AI Game Board As A GPT Wrapper

With game board now set, the next phase in AI app development promises to elevate the once-dismissively labeled GPT wrappers.

January 2025

The Future of Software Development Won't Be Just One AI Coding Tool to Rule Them All

AI coding tools have impressed, but won't be replacing human developers or the software development lifecycle they work in anytime soon.

November 2024

2024: The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise

AI spending surged to $13.8 billion this year, more than 6x that spent in 2023—a clear signal that enterprises are shifting from experimentation to execution

September 2024

AI Agents: A New Architecture for Enterprise Automation

With new building blocks like multi-step logic, external memory, and access to third-party tools and APIs, AI agents are expanding the frontier of AI capabilities.

September 2024

Beyond Bots: The Next Wave of Enterprise Automation

New cognitive architectures are enabling AI agents to dynamically automate end-to-end processes for the first time.

April 2024

7 Golden Rules for Generative AI Apps: A Playboook from Early Winners

Generative AI's first wave of winners have emerged. We distilled the key strategies that made them successful in a new playbook.

April 2024

Backing the Stack: Why Menlo Invested in Unstructured

Unstructured has become the preferred way developers build AI applications and assemble data pipelines.

January 2024

The Modern AI Stack: Design Principles for the Future of Enterprise AI Architectures

Design principles shaping the future of enterprise AI architectures.

November 2023

2023: The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise

We surveyed more than 450 enterprise executives across the U.S. and Europe to provide a view into generative AI adoption in the enterprise.

September 2023

Our Investment in Cartwheel: Improving Youth Mental Health

Cartwheel is a digital health platform addressing the youth mental health crisis by partnering with schools to provide integrated care services.

August 2023

Menlo's Investment in Neon: Serverless Postgres for Modern Workloads

Menlo had been on the hunt for a modern OLTP database with separation of storage and compute, akin to Snowflake's game-changing approach to OLAP, for quite some time.

May 2023

Our Investment in Anthropic: The Foundation Layer for Generative AI

Anthropic is one of the leading language model providers at the foundation layer, with a clear focus on building aligned AI systems.

April 2023

The Seven Generative AI Building Blocks for the Next Generation of Consumer Technology Companies

Essential components driving the next generation of consumer technology companies in the AI era.

February 2023

Our Investment in Typeface: Generative AI at Enterprise Speed and Scale

Typeface is an enterprise-grade generative AI application that drives high-quality, brand-personalized content lifecycle development at speed and scale.

December 2022

Carefully Crafted Digital Approaches Can Improve Youths' Mental Health Care

Digital health startups are offering promising solutions to address the youth mental health crisis, potentially improving access, outcomes, and affordability.

September 2025

AI’s UI Problem Is Actually A New Era of Software

AI apps look the same, but only because the real innovation is happening under the hood: the logical scaffolding that turns prompts into automation.

July 2025

2025 Mid-Year LLM Market Update: Foundation Model Landscape & Economics

Model API spending has surged from $3.5 billion to $8.4 billion in six months, and a new enterprise LLM market leader has emerged in Anthropic.

March 2025

Menlo's Investment In Graphite: Code Review For The AI Age

Graphite is an AI code review platform that helps engineering teams ship quality code faster.

February 2025

Navigating The AI Game Board As A GPT Wrapper

With game board now set, the next phase in AI app development promises to elevate the once-dismissively labeled GPT wrappers.

January 2025

The Future of Software Development Won't Be Just One AI Coding Tool to Rule Them All

AI coding tools have impressed, but won't be replacing human developers or the software development lifecycle they work in anytime soon.

November 2024

2024: The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise

AI spending surged to $13.8 billion this year, more than 6x that spent in 2023—a clear signal that enterprises are shifting from experimentation to execution

September 2024

AI Agents: A New Architecture for Enterprise Automation

With new building blocks like multi-step logic, external memory, and access to third-party tools and APIs, AI agents are expanding the frontier of AI capabilities.

September 2024

Beyond Bots: The Next Wave of Enterprise Automation

New cognitive architectures are enabling AI agents to dynamically automate end-to-end processes for the first time.

April 2024

7 Golden Rules for Generative AI Apps: A Playboook from Early Winners

Generative AI's first wave of winners have emerged. We distilled the key strategies that made them successful in a new playbook.

April 2024

Backing the Stack: Why Menlo Invested in Unstructured

Unstructured has become the preferred way developers build AI applications and assemble data pipelines.

January 2024

The Modern AI Stack: Design Principles for the Future of Enterprise AI Architectures

Design principles shaping the future of enterprise AI architectures.

November 2023

2023: The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise

We surveyed more than 450 enterprise executives across the U.S. and Europe to provide a view into generative AI adoption in the enterprise.

September 2023

Our Investment in Cartwheel: Improving Youth Mental Health

Cartwheel is a digital health platform addressing the youth mental health crisis by partnering with schools to provide integrated care services.

August 2023

Menlo's Investment in Neon: Serverless Postgres for Modern Workloads

Menlo had been on the hunt for a modern OLTP database with separation of storage and compute, akin to Snowflake's game-changing approach to OLAP, for quite some time.

May 2023

Our Investment in Anthropic: The Foundation Layer for Generative AI

Anthropic is one of the leading language model providers at the foundation layer, with a clear focus on building aligned AI systems.

April 2023

The Seven Generative AI Building Blocks for the Next Generation of Consumer Technology Companies

Essential components driving the next generation of consumer technology companies in the AI era.

February 2023

Our Investment in Typeface: Generative AI at Enterprise Speed and Scale

Typeface is an enterprise-grade generative AI application that drives high-quality, brand-personalized content lifecycle development at speed and scale.

December 2022

Carefully Crafted Digital Approaches Can Improve Youths' Mental Health Care

Digital health startups are offering promising solutions to address the youth mental health crisis, potentially improving access, outcomes, and affordability.