On Tuesday, Anthropic (creators of Claude AI) became Patron sponsors of Blender, committing to a yearly donation of €240,000 (roughly the cost of four full-time devs). This funding went to building an official MCP connector that lets Claude analyze and debug scenes and manipulate blender through scripts via the Python API (video demo). This was not Claude specific. It works with any LLM.
Predictably, this announcement got a lot of heat online. So today, they made this post. Saying that Anthropic's donation is now a once-off and going forward they're "strengthening the processes when it comes to accepting donations". Implying - though not outright stating - that this was a mistake, and they won't accepting donations from AI companies going forward.
*puts on flame retardant overalls*
Look, I get not wanting to piss off a community. But Blender survives on donations. They regularly ask you, me, and businesses that work with Blender, to donate to fund development. Refusing a quarter of a million dollars in yearly funding, at a time when text-to-output workflows threaten some need for 3D at all, is short-sighted. Right now, most commercial creative applications are scrambling for ways to add AI assistive tools, and Blender is walking in the other direction.
Previously, I was worried about Blender's future, but now I'm terrified. Call me a delusional tech bro if you like (and many do), but I don't think AI will get any worse. And stalling is not the move.
