Krishna Rao - Anthropic's CFO on Compute, Scaling to $30B ARR, and the Returns to Frontier Intelligence - [Invest Like the Best, EP.472]
episodePreviously titled “Krishna Rao - Anthropic's CFO on Compute, Scaling to $30B ARR, and the Returns to Frontier Intelligence - [Invest Like the Best, EP.471]” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
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What is Anthropic’s core business and why is compute described as the lifeblood of the company?
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper, check out Colossus, our quarterly publication with in-depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus along with all of our podcasts at Colossus.com.
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc.
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 training, TPUs, and GPUs, and the daily meetings they run to allocate compute between model development, internal use, and serving customer demand. He explains where 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 already learned since joining the company two years ago. Please enjoy my conversation with Krishna Rao. Well, Krishna, I have been so excited for this conversation because you get to see from the inside one of the most interesting businesses in world history at maybe the most interesting time in world history, at least if you're a technologist or care about technology. One of the things that fascinates me most is this question of compute that you have to deal with all day, every day. It's a key part of what you do. It's a key part of what these companies are doing. And there's just this whole revolution happening.
I'd love you to just start by explaining what it's like to have to deal with that. I understand at one point you were having like a daily meeting about how to allocate to compute and to who and why.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Anthropic’s core business and why is compute described as the lifeblood of the company?
0:01–11:00
2
How does Anthropic use the “cone of uncertainty” to decide how much compute to buy and where to allocate it?
11:00–21:17
3
Why does Anthropic run three fungible chip platforms (Trainium, TPUs, GPUs) and how does that affect flexibility and cost?
21:17–32:03
4
What is the balance between building a platform versus building applications like Claude Code?
32:03–42:11
5
How have frontier‑intelligence returns stayed high and what role do pricing and the Jevons paradox play?
42:11–52:41
6
How does Anthropic’s finance team use Claude and what cultural principles drive internal adoption?
52:41–1:03:04
7
What are the biggest risks and future opportunities, such as virtual collaborators and scaling laws?
1:03:04–1:13:20
8
What excites Krishna most about Anthropic’s future and what personal insights does he share?
1:13:20–1:16:22
Speakers
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