Anthropic's head of tax is the company’s top user of AI tokens, surpassing engineers and researchers in internal consumption. CFO Krishna Rao shared this surprising insight during a May 13 podcast appearance, highlighting how the finance team has fully embraced the company’s AI model, Claude.
Instead of dabbling, the finance group has developed between 70 and 150 custom Claude workflows tailored to specific tasks. These workflows automate complex processes like statutory financial statement preparation, which used to require hours of manual effort but now are mostly handled by AI with human oversight. Weekly reports on revenue and compute usage that once took hours are now completed in about 30 minutes.
This heavy adoption by tax professionals reflects their deep domain knowledge and the complex, regulatory-driven nature of their work. They’re perfectly positioned to build and refine AI tools that handle intricate tasks, ensuring accuracy through informed review. Anthropic even tracks internal token use with leaderboards, though these don’t affect compensation.
As AI models like Claude improve, token consumption is expected to rise, driving more efficiency. These developments suggest larger finance teams might replicate and scale such AI workflows, though the need for careful human review remains critical to avoid errors in legally sensitive documents.
