Krishna Rao is the CFO of Anthropic, and this is his first podcast appearance.
He joined the company two years ago when run-rate revenue was about $250M. Today it is $30B. He has helped raise ~$75B and is responsible for the procurement and allocation of compute.
I feel lucky we get to hear what it is like to sit inside a company this consequential at a moment this pivotal.
We discuss:
- The cone of uncertainty
- How he allocates compute across Trainium, TPUs, and GPUs
- What investors misunderstand about model companies
- Why the returns to frontier intelligence keep rising
- Platform vs application and where Anthropic builds its own products
- How Anthropic uses Claude internally
I have asked my closing question about the kindest thing more than 500 times. Krishna's answer is one I have never heard before.
Enjoy!
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:38 The Compute Canvas
6:51 The "Cone of Uncertainty"
11:58 Why the Returns to Frontier Intelligence Are So High
16:45 Recursive Self-Improvement
20:20 Scaling Laws
23:30 Sourcing $100 Billion in Compute
28:05 Platform vs. Application Strategy
32:52 Pricing Dynamics
38:48 How Anthropicโs Finance Team Uses Claude
43:24 Raising Capital & Overcoming Investor Skepticism
52:32 Public Perception, Risks, and Government Regulation
57:25 Mythos Release
1:12:33 What Could Derail the AI Revolution?
1:13:47 Biotech and Healthcare
1:15:31 The Kindest Thing
..
1. Reads like a msg written by a human, for a human
2. Referral at 25% is worth it's weight in gold, for any business
3. Happy to be a customer of this brand ..& product
Look at the brand love in the comments section
https://t.co/igkSe89u0J
@nikhilkamathcio@Nithin0dha
@ICICIBank_Care If u do understand, just return the money by EOD
Deposit everyone's money electronically on the same day ..
and ask the Treasury team to stop making money using @ICICIBank customer's funds ..
@RBI should be ok with that too!
.. Just been told that by customer care that MY money from MY ICICI cc to MY ICICI acc will be transferred on Monday (bec of the wkend)
The same @ICICIBank manages to deduct home loan EMIs even on weekends and public holidays..
Wonder what @RBIsays about this ?
..
โThe best in the world are not the best in the world because they win every point. It's because they know they'll lose again and again and again, and have learned how to deal with it.โ
โ Roger Federer
#failure#risk