Blender CEO On Anthropic Funding: "This Is Not AI Takeover"
A closer look at the sponsorship news and recent developments, including the new Claude-Blender connector.
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Over the past year, the Blender Foundation has attracted many major sponsors, drawing strong appreciation from the community. Arrowhead Game Studios, the developer of Helldivers 2, became a Corporate Gold sponsor shortly after Netflix, joining other backers such as Epic MegaGrant, Pico, Wacom, Bolt Graphics, Meta, Adobe, Dell, and Chaos.
This time, the sponsorship news was met with quite a different reaction. Anthropic, best known for the Claude AI assistant, became a Corporate Patron, contributing €240,000 per year to support Blender's ongoing development. Although skepticism toward funding from big tech players like Meta has always been present, the involvement of a generative AI company raised additional concerns, with some users even going as far as calling it "bloody money."
"In these uncertain and divisive times, we appreciate Anthropic offering support to the Blender project in the form of a Patron-level membership. This enables the Blender team to keep pursuing projects independently, and to focus on building tools for artists and creators", said Francesco Siddi, Blender's CEO.
If you go to Blender's Funding Policy page linked in the announcement post, you'll find the following paragraph:
"Corporate participation in the Development Fund does not imply alignment between Blender and the donor's mission, products, or strategy. That is not the purpose of the Fund. The only requirement for joining the Fund is to support Blender's mission: building the best 3D creation technology as free and open source software."
The same page also notes the Foundation aims to balance individual and corporate donations to keep Blender financially stable and to prevent any single donor, or group of donors, from having too much influence over the organization. So, how much influence does Anthropic actually have over Blender's development now?
Blender is still an open-source project, which means it can't be owned or controlled by any company. However, around the time of the Anthropic sponsorship announcement, a new Claude-Blender connector from the Blender Lab was also launched:
In a recent episode of Blender Today LIVE, Pablo Vazquez and Francesco Siddi discussed Blender's broader approach to AI and the controversy around the topic, emphasizing that the focus remains on building tools for artists above all else. Siddi also addressed the Anthropic sponsorship, saying: "This is towards helping Blender itself as a software, this is not an AI takeover."
They both pointed back to the Funding Policy page, stressing that the support is "no strings attached," in the same way as contributions from companies like Meta. While acknowledging that people have every right to be critical of this decision, Siddi urged them to keep supporting the Blender project as individuals, as this helps preserve its independence. You can watch the full episode below:
This also comes in the context of recent Blender community drama around Andrew Price aka Blender Guru, the creator of the donut tutorial, who has publicly supported generative AI, so it's not surprising that reactions have been strong.
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