Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) research company, has appointed Rahul Patil, former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Stripe, as its new CTO. Patil commenced his role earlier this week, succeeding co-founder Sam McCandlish, who transitions to the position of Chief Architect.
This leadership change is accompanied by a strategic restructuring within Anthropic’s technical division. The company aims to integrate its product-engineering team more closely with the infrastructure and inference teams. In his new capacity, Patil will oversee critical areas including computing resources, infrastructure development, inference processes, and various engineering functions. Meanwhile, McCandlish will focus on pre-training methodologies and large-scale model training, building upon his previous contributions. Both Patil and McCandlish will report directly to Anthropic’s President, Daniela Amodei.
The reorganization comes at a time when Anthropic faces significant competition in AI infrastructure from industry giants like OpenAI and Meta. These competitors have committed substantial investments into computing infrastructure. For instance, Meta has announced plans to invest $600 billion in U.S. infrastructure by the end of 2028, and OpenAI has engaged in similar large-scale projects through collaborations with companies like Oracle. While Anthropic’s exact infrastructure investment figures remain undisclosed, the company is under considerable pressure to optimize its infrastructure for both speed and energy efficiency.
The growing popularity of Anthropic’s AI products, particularly the Claude series, has placed additional demands on the company’s infrastructure. In July, Anthropic implemented new usage limits for Claude Code to manage the strain caused by power users who operated the application continuously. The updated guidelines restrict users to between 240 and 480 hours of Sonnet usage per week, and between 24 and 40 hours of Opus 4 usage, depending on infrastructure capacity.
Rahul Patil brings over two decades of experience in various engineering roles to Anthropic. His previous positions include five years in technical roles at Stripe and serving as Senior Vice President for Cloud Infrastructure at Oracle. Additionally, Patil has held engineering roles at Amazon and Microsoft, providing him with a comprehensive background in infrastructure development and management.
In a statement, Daniela Amodei highlighted Patil’s expertise in building reliable infrastructure for enterprises. Rahul brings a proven track record in building and scaling the kind of dependable infrastructure that businesses need, she stated. I couldn’t be more excited about what this means for strengthening Claude’s position as the leading intelligence platform for enterprises.
Patil expressed his enthusiasm for joining Anthropic during a pivotal period in AI development. I’m thrilled to join Anthropic at this pivotal moment in AI development, he said, emphasizing that his new role feels like the most important work I could be doing right now—I personally can’t think of a greater calling and responsibility.
This appointment is part of Anthropic’s broader strategy to enhance its AI infrastructure and maintain a competitive edge in the rapidly evolving AI industry. The company has been actively recruiting top talent to bolster its capabilities. In May 2024, Anthropic appointed Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram, as its first Chief Product Officer. Krieger’s role focuses on overseeing product engineering, management, and design efforts, aiming to expand Anthropic’s suite of AI applications and bring its generative AI technology, Claude, to a wider audience.
In addition to leadership appointments, Anthropic has been strengthening its partnerships and infrastructure. In April 2025, the company formed a new team dedicated to accelerating the adoption of its AI products among Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers. This move underscores Anthropic’s commitment to expanding its reach and integrating its AI solutions into various enterprise environments.
Furthermore, Anthropic has been proactive in addressing AI safety and alignment. In May 2024, the company hired Jan Leike, a former safety lead at OpenAI, to head a new superalignment team. This team focuses on scalable oversight, weak-to-strong generalization, and automated alignment research, reflecting Anthropic’s dedication to developing AI systems that are both powerful and aligned with human values.
The appointment of Rahul Patil as CTO signifies Anthropic’s ongoing efforts to enhance its technical leadership and infrastructure capabilities. By bringing in experienced professionals and restructuring its technical teams, Anthropic aims to navigate the challenges of a competitive AI landscape and continue delivering innovative and reliable AI solutions to its users.
