Anthropic’s $1B to $19B growth run: how Claude became the fastest-growing AI product in history

Amol Avasare, head of growth at Anthropic, discusses how the company scaled from roughly $1B to about $19B in annual recurring revenue in roughly 14 months. The conversation covers activation and onboarding in AI products, how growth work is shifting toward larger bets, automating growth experimentation, and how the PM role is changing as engineers gain leverage from AI tools. He also shares his background, including a failed startup and a traumatic brain injury.

01Key learnings

• Expect most growth time to go to 'success disasters' once growth is rapid; firefighting breaking systems matters as much as new bets.
• In AI-first products, skew the growth portfolio toward larger swings, since future product value could be orders of magnitude above today's.
• Treat activation as a top lever in AI products: identify user traits that predict which feature fits them, then guide them there.
• Adding well-tested friction, such as short questionnaires that personalize recommendations, can raise conversion and completion; cut only friction that adds no value.
• Quality work can drive growth: a focused quarter on polishing a broken onboarding flow produced one of the most impactful results of a career.
• Use AI agents to run growth experiments end to end (ideation, build, test, analysis), with humans approving at first and scaling as weekly metrics improve.
• When engineers become much more productive with AI, let product-minded engineers own small projects (about two engineering weeks or less) while PMs focus on larger, cross-functional work and deeper product judgment.
• Be willing to leave money on the table for brand, safety and user trust; long-term growth depends on it.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.