UPDATE 1-Anthropic hires Airbnb veteran Krishna Rao as first CFO, The Information reports

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May 21 (Reuters) – Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic has hired Airbnb veteran Krishna Rao as its first finance chief, The Information reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Anthropic and Rao did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The company has raised billions from cloud service providers Google and Amazon.com and other venture capital firms as it looks to keep up with Microsoft-backed rival and ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

Rao was previously CFO at digital sports platform Fanatics Commerce and global head of corporate and business development at Airbnb between 2018 and 2021.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Shilpi Majumdar)

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