Uncovering Anthropic’s first CFO: Investors chase after him to send money—he’s specifically responsible for refusing it

According to Beating Monitoring, Anthropic is preparing a super fundraising round with an estimated valuation likely to surpass $900 billion. But amid the frenzy of hot money pouring in, The Wall Street Journal revealed the extremely unusual tactics of the first CFO Krishna Rao: he not only repeatedly used “not yet funded” to dissuade investors but also deliberately refused the highest valuations offered by the market, choosing to raise less money than expected and providing conservative revenue forecasts.

CEO Dario Amodei often writes lengthy philosophical essays and publicly argues with the White House; Rao is the person who keeps the situation under control for him. He joined in May 2024, and his most famous battle was in 2020 during the pandemic outbreak, where he secured $1 billion in emergency funding for Airbnb. While working at Blackstone, he pretended to be a novice and won all the chips from his boss in poker, earning the nickname “Chairman Rao” from colleagues. Investors say he always knows when to step forward and when to step back.

Behind the lowered valuation and expectations is Rao’s most difficult strategic dilemma. As Claude Code becomes a huge hit, the company’s revenue run rate in April has already exceeded $30 billion. The enormous demand requires him to make an immediate decision: whether to lock in hundreds of billions of dollars worth of computing power contracts from 2027 to 2029 in advance. If he commits heavily and future revenue slows down, these hardware assets could turn into a deadly devaluation burden.

This daily extreme tug-of-war has completely consumed his life. When he asked his Yale Law School mentor how to balance family life, the mentor directly advised him to give up: “You can’t find balance. This is a company that is making history, and you are in the room where history is being made. Ride it.”