Krishna Rao says compute is the lifeblood of Anthropic, and he spends 30 to 40 percent of his time on it.
Anthropic says run-rate revenue grew from about $9bn at the start of 2026 to over $30bn by the end of Q1, with net dollar retention over 500 percent annualized.
Rao argues that Opus price cuts drove usage far beyond what the cut implied, a Jevons paradox effect that makes compute returns robust rather than a simple variable cost.
Anthropic's CFO on why compute spending keeps paying off
Anthropic's CFO argues that compute is the lifeblood of the business and that its returns are robust. Each Claude generation is more efficient and unlocks new markets, and run-rate revenue went from $9bn to over $30bn in a quarter. He plans compute against a range of scenarios rather than a single forecast.
Takeaways
Compute is the constraint Rao spends most time on. Rao spends 30 to 40 percent of his time on compute. Anthropic uses three chip platforms interchangeably for training and serving, and builds its own compilers. It models scenarios over one to two years and keeps a floor on model development compute.
Frontier capability keeps repaying the compute spent. Rao says each Opus release is more efficient than the last, and capability gains open new markets, especially enterprise. Scaling laws are alive and well for Anthropic, though he allows this is uncertain. He calls compute's returns robust, not a simple variable cost.
Run-rate revenue passed $30bn in one quarter. Run-rate revenue rose from about $9bn at the start of 2026 to over $30bn by the end of Q1. Net dollar retention exceeds 500 percent annualized. Cowork, which grew out of Claude Code, is growing faster than Claude Code did.
Cheaper Opus pricing produced far larger usage. Anthropic has kept prices stable and cut Opus prices at the Opus 4.5 launch. Usage rose far more than the cut implied, which Rao calls a Jevons paradox effect.
Multi-gigawatt deals lock in future supply. A five-gigawatt TPU deal with Google and Broadcom starts in 2027. An Amazon Trainium deal of up to five gigawatts is an over $100bn commitment. Anthropic says it is the only model on all three major clouds.
Claude already writes most of Anthropic's code. More than 90 percent of the code comes from Claude Code, and models help build the next generation, though talent sets direction. Rao says productivity gains led Anthropic to hire more people. The finance team has over 70 Claude skills.
Anthropic's financing path under Rao
Rao joined as the Series D was closing, when the FTX transaction was liquidating Anthropic shares.
The Series E closed at the end of 2024 with run-rate revenue close to $1bn, on the day DeepSeek news broke.
Anthropic has raised $75bn since he joined, with another $50bn expected from the Amazon and Google deals.
Investors question frontier model returns, the sales model and enterprise adoption, and struggle to treat compute as fungible.
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