ANTHROPIC BACKS BLENDER WITH CORPORATE FUNDING

Anthropic, the AI safety company behind Claude, becomes the latest tech firm to support Blender through the development fund. The initiative pools resources from corporate sponsors to accelerate development of the open-source 3D creation suite. Blender has attracted backing from major companies including Google, Meta, and NVIDIA. The development fund model allows sponsors to contribute financially while the software remains freely available to creators and developers worldwide. The partnership reflects growing recognition that open-source tools are critical infrastructure for the tech industry. Blender's 3D capabilities are increasingly relevant for AI training, synthetic data generation, and digital content creation—areas where Anthropic operates. No financial terms were disclosed. The move comes as open-source projects face both increased demand and sustainability challenges, with corporate patronage emerging as a key funding model.