Recently, we announced that Anthropic was joining the Blender Development Fund as a Corporate Patron member. Since then, we’ve heard concerns from the community around how we engage with any AI company. We should have opened up more conversation and perspectives from contributors before making this decision, and for that we are sorry.
After an in-depth discussion with the team and several community contributors, we have decided to receive the funds as a singular donation instead of a Development Fund membership, similar to how other open source organizations have handled such contributions. Anthropic has been informed and supports this decision.
Like all Blender donations, it will be spent on core activities for the Blender project, supporting human-driven development, art, and creativity.
Moving forward, Blender Foundation is strengthening the processes when it comes to accepting donations, aligned with the existing Funding Policy. Progress will be communicated through the upcoming board meeting logs on blender.org.
Most importantly, we need to urgently tackle the topic and clearly define how Blender is positioned in regards to generative AI technologies when it comes to the product, software development, documentation, and other activities. Discussions will happen in the public blender.org channels, based on drafts by the Blender team.
Blender is a tool for artists and creators, it’s made by humans for humans. No generative AI functionality is currently available or planned to be integrated in Blender.
I want to thank everyone for their understanding and helpful feedback, as we deal with this topic, and keep improving the Blender project together.
For feedback and enquiries, you can reach out to foundation (at) blender (dot) org.
Francesco Siddi
Chairman Blender Foundation
Amsterdam, May 1, 2026