Krishna Rao

CFO of Anthropic

Claims

As speaker

Mentioned in

Key positions and views

Frontier AI's Value is in the Enterprise: Rao's core business thesis is that the highest returns on investment for advanced AI models will come from enterprise applications, justifying the focus on selling to the world's largest companies.

Compute Diversification is Essential: He champions a multi-platform strategy, utilizing chips from Amazon, Google, and NVIDIA to ensure supply chain resilience, cost efficiency, and performance optimization.

Vertical Integration Drives Efficiency: Rao advocates for building proprietary software, including compilers, from the 'chip level up' to achieve maximum customization, flexibility, and return on investment from their diverse hardware.

Scaling Laws Remain Intact: He holds the position that the principle of improving AI models by increasing scale is not yet facing diminishing returns, validating the company's massive investments in compute power.

Aggressive Internal AI Adoption is a Competitive Advantage: Rao believes that using their own AI for critical internal functions like coding and financial analysis is key to out-innovating competitors and demonstrating the product's value.

Podcast consensus on Rao

Points of consensus

▶Rao consistently emphasizes Anthropic's massive and rapid financial growth, citing a run rate revenue increase from approximately $9 billion to over $30 billion in a single quarter.May 2026

▶He highlights the company's success in raising vast amounts of capital, noting $75 billion raised since he joined and an expected additional $50 billion from partners.May 2026

▶Rao's strategic focus on securing immense, diversified compute capacity is a recurring point, evidenced by major deals with Google, Amazon, and SpaceX for multiple gigawatts of power.May 2026

▶He consistently promotes the company's strong position in the enterprise market, stating that Anthropic sells to nine of the Fortune 10 companies.May 2026

Points of debate

▶There is a significant contrast between the financial metrics Rao emphasizes: he touts a forward-looking run rate revenue exceeding $30 billion, while a legal affidavit cited by a third party states a backward-looking lifetime revenue of only $5 billion.May 2026

▶Rao claims Anthropic is among 'the most efficient users of compute amongst any of the frontier labs,' a subjective and self-promotional assertion that is not independently verified by the provided claims.

▶Rao's assertion that 'scaling laws are not slowing down' represents a bullish stance on a topic of active debate within the broader AI research community, where some experts express concerns about diminishing returns.

▶While Rao highlights raising $75 billion, the specific nature of this capital (e.g., cash versus compute credits) is not fully clarified, a point of contention often raised by industry skeptics.

Key themes

▶Aggressive Multi-Platform Compute StrategyMay 2026

Rao details a capital-intensive strategy focused on securing massive, diverse compute resources. This involves multi-gigawatt deals with Google for TPUs and Amazon for Tranium chips, a partnership with SpaceX, and building a proprietary software stack with custom compilers to manage these different platforms fungibly and efficiently.

This diversification of chip suppliers (Google, Amazon, NVIDIA) is a significant de-risking strategy against supply chain bottlenecks and pricing power from any single vendor, positioning Anthropic for more resilient long-term scaling.

▶Hyper-Growth Financial ModelMay 2026

The claims paint a picture of explosive financial expansion under Rao's tenure. This is characterized by a tripling of run rate revenue in one quarter, an annualized net dollar retention rate over 500%, and raising tens of billions in capital.

The reliance on 'run rate revenue' and massive capital infusions, rather than realized profit, suggests a 'growth at all costs' strategy typical of hyper-scaling tech companies, which carries significant execution risk and dependency on continued investor confidence.

▶Enterprise Focus as a Core ThesisMay 2026

Rao explicitly states that the 'returns to frontier intelligence are extremely high, especially in enterprise.' This thesis is supported by claims of selling to nine of the Fortune 10 companies and the faster growth of their enterprise-focused product, Co-Work, over their developer tool.

By targeting the largest corporations, Anthropic is aiming for high-value, long-term contracts that can justify the immense capital expenditure on compute, indicating a strategy focused on deep integration rather than broad consumer adoption.

▶Intensive Internal AI Utilization ('Dogfooding')May 2026

Rao emphasizes how Anthropic extensively uses its own AI, Claude, to accelerate its operations. This ranges from generating over 90% of its own code to automating complex financial reporting, reducing tasks that took hours to just 30 minutes.

This 'dogfooding' serves as both a powerful internal productivity driver and a compelling marketing tool, demonstrating the tangible business value of their products to potential enterprise clients.

Source episodes

Sentiment over time

Not enough data for timeline

Changes over time

Approx. two years ago

Krishna Rao joins Anthropic as CFO.

Start of the year

Anthropic's run rate revenue is stated to be approximately $9 billion.

End of Q1 of the year

Anthropic's run rate revenue grows to over $30 billion.

March 9, 2026

In a legal affidavit, Rao states Anthropic's lifetime revenue is $5 billion.

2027

A 5-gigawatt TPU compute capacity deal with Google and Broadcom is set to begin.

Suggested prompts

How does Krishna Rao's strategy of diversifying compute suppliers (Google, Amazon, NVIDIA) mitigate financial and operational risks compared to competitors who may be single-sourced? &nearr;What is the significance of the discrepancy between Anthropic's reported '$30B+ run rate revenue' and its '$5B lifetime revenue' as stated in the affidavit? &nearr;Given that over 90% of Anthropic's code is written by its own AI, what are the potential long-term impacts on software development productivity, quality, and security? &nearr;How sustainable is Anthropic's financial model, which relies on massive capital infusions and shows a 500%+ net dollar retention rate, and what are the primary risks to this model? &nearr;

Key concepts

Compute Strategy 2 ep Financial Performance 2 ep Capital Raising 1 ep Enterprise Sales 1 ep AI Model Capabilities 1 ep Internal AI Integration 1 ep Cloud Partnerships 1 ep Software & Hardware Stack 1 ep Scaling Laws 1 ep

Notable quotes

“We started the year with about $9 billion of run rate revenue, and we ended the quarter with north of $30 billion of run rate revenue.”

Krishna Rao · How Claude went from $9 billion to $30 billion in one year | CFO explains

“Number one, we use three different chip platforms. So we are customers of Amazon's Tranium chip, Google's TPUs, and NVIDIA's GPUs.”

Krishna Rao · How Claude went from $9 billion to $30 billion in one year | CFO explains

“we think the returns to frontier intelligence are extremely high. And it's extremely high, especially in enterprise. That's a core thesis of our business.”

Krishna Rao · How Claude went from $9 billion to $30 billion in one year | CFO explains

“Right now within the company, you know, 90 plus percent of our code is actually written by cloud code, right?”

Krishna Rao · How Claude went from $9 billion to $30 billion in one year | CFO explains

Report last updated: May 21, 2026

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