May 21 (Reuters) - Artificial intelligence startup

Anthropic has hired Airbnb ( ABNB ) 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 ( AMZN ) and other venture

capital firms as it looks to keep up with Microsoft ( MSFT )-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 ( ABNB ) between 2018 and 2021.