Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#1

Post by Philpax » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 4:07 PM UTC

Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron
blender.org

Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#2

Post by faangguyindia » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

Any ideas why anthropic is interested in blender funding?

Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#3

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 4:15 PM UTC

faangguyindia wrote: post #2

Any ideas why anthropic is interested in blender funding?

3D printer censorship

Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#4

Post by dontblink » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

I can imagine they would be interested in creating features to generate 3d models.

Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#5

Post by ripbozo » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

faangguyindia wrote: post #2

Any ideas why anthropic is interested in blender funding?

good PR, probably

Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#6

Post by riidom » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 4:17 PM UTC

That's already blowing up on Mastodon. Blenderartist silent for now. Won't stay like that for very long.

I wonder, if Ton was involved in that decision, or if it's only Francesco. Could turn out to be a very unlucky start into the leadership role.

Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#7

Post by twoodfin » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

faangguyindia wrote: post #2

Any ideas why anthropic is interested in blender funding?

Presumably because they think agents will become the dominant primary users of tools like Blender, and want a seat at the architectural table to help accelerate that & create useful synergies with Anthropic products and models?

The press release calls out the Blender Python API, specifically, which makes sense for agentic use.

Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#8

Post by shevy-java » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

I have mixed feeling about this. Guess they can need the money ... but still. Data goes to Anthropic here. It also will buy influence in some ways, I am sure about that. We could see this with rubygems.org - when shopify threatened to cut funding some months ago, suddenly chaos erupted. Money buys influence, this is easy to see how.

Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#9

Post by muhuk » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 4:20 PM UTC

There will be community backlash. And it will not be uncalled for. Sad news.

Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#10

Post by Raed667 » Tue, Apr 28, 2026, 4:20 PM UTC

> improve foundational features like the Blender Python API, which enables developers and artists alike

So they want claude to be able to talk to blender