Krishna Rao - Anthropic's CFO on Compute, Scaling to $30B ARR, and the Returns to Frontier Intelligence - [Invest Like the Best, EP.472]

Krishna Rao - Anthropic's CFO on Compute, Scaling to $30B ARR, and the Returns to Frontier Intelligence - [Invest Like the Best, EP.472]

From Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy by Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts

May 13, 2026 · 1h 16m · Episode 472

About this episode

Krishna Rao discusses compute allocation and the growth of Anthropic in the AI space.

My guest today is Krishna Rao, the CFO of Anthropic. The center of our conversation is how he navigates the decision around procuring and allocating compute, which he describes as the canvas on which everything else gets built. We talk about what he calls the cone of uncertainty, the three chip platforms Anthropic uses fungibly across Trainium, TPUs, and GPUs, and the daily meetings they run to allocate compute between model development, internal use, and serving customer demand. He explains why the returns to frontier intelligence keep getting higher, especially in enterprise, and how Anthropic thinks about the line between platform and application and why they choose to build their own products like Claude Code. Krishna has such a unique seat watching one of the fastest growing businesses in history, and he is generous in sharing what he has learned since joining the company two years ago. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes…

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