Dive Brief:

• AI safety and research startup Anthropic has appointed Airbnb alum Krishna Rao as its CFO, the company announced Tuesday in a press release. Rao is the organization’s first-ever CFO, a company spokesperson confirmed, appointed as the San Francisco, California-based company looks to accelerate plans for international expansion and growth.
• Rao’s “deep expertise in financial strategy and analysis, capital allocation, and scaling high-growth organizations will be essential,” President and co-founder Daniela Amodei said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to have him join our leadership team and help guide Anthropic through our next phase of growth.”
• The company is ushering in top financial leadership as it aims to peer further inside AI’s “black box” and address concerns regarding the secure and ethical use of the emerging technology.

Dive Insight:

Before joining Anthropic, Rao most recently served as CFO, Fanatics Commerce for online sports and retail platform Fanatics, according to his LinkedIn profile.

His previous roles include serving as finance chief for healthcare payments integration service Cedar as well as a six-year stint at online vacation and home rental platform Airbnb. Rao acted as Airbnb’s global head of corporate and business development as well as director, FP&A throughout his time at the business, and has also held roles at Blackstone and Bain & Company.

Rao is taking Anthropic’s top financial seat as the company seeks to better understand the often-opaque way AI models generate their findings. 

The company offers its own large language models, including its Claude Sonnet and Claude Opus tools, with varying levels of costs and sophistication. At the same time, Anthropic is focusing on “reverse-engineering” how AI apps derive answers to user questions, according to a recent report by Wired.

Shining a clearer light on the path from AI input to AI output is becoming more crucial as concerns about the technology’s potential pitfalls grow among both business leaders, consumers and regulators.

During a July 2023 hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei warned that bad actors could potentially utilize AI to develop biological weapons and advised they take steps to curb both short- and long-term AI challenges, according to a report by Bloomberg. In October, President Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring the Department of Labor to come up with frameworks to protect workers as businesses adopt AI, CFO Dive reported.

A lack of ability to trace where and how AI has come up with its answers could also leave businesses open to risks including bias, the use of copyrighted or trademarked information, or “hallucinations” by their AI — data that is outright falsified by the technology.   

Such risks have led to an increased focus on “responsible AI” among business leaders as companies continue to funnel resources into the technology’s development. Major technology companies including OpenAI, Microsoft and Amazon were among a number of global companies which have inked an agreement for safe development of AI models, according to a Tuesday CNBC report. The companies will publish safety frameworks to monitor risks towards their emerging AI models, including “red lines” for “intolerable” risks such as automated cyberattacks, CNBC reported.

Companies, meanwhile, are also allocating resources towards responsible AI development in the face of growing risks. In a survey by Big Four accounting firm KPMG, 70% of CEOs said their companies were ready to navigate generative AI’s ethical risks, CFO Dive previously reported. Training and education as well as regular audits were the most popular solutions being tapped by leaders to help manage those risks.

Finance chiefs are keeping their eyes on costs — those CFOs who said their companies are already utilizing GenAI also expect a jump in their cybersecurity costs, CFO Dive reported.   

Anthropic declined to comment on Rao’s appointment beyond the details included in its Tuesday news release.