The 'Patil effect' at the centre of the 'SaaSpocalypse'

Chidanand RajghattaTNN
Feb 8, 2026 | 20:55 IST
Image: AI

Rahul Patil is the earthy, cricket-loving, CTO of Anthropic and at the centre of the new Claude plugins that have hit tech company stocks globally

Long before AI upstart Anthropic spooked the software services market and bled billions in market value from companies ranging from Accenture and Adobe to Infosys and TCS this week, Elon Musk noted the irony of its name, suggesting “Misanthropic” — disliking humankind and human society — may have been a better fit.

But the man who’s at the centre of the breathtaking jolt to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry is anything but a misanthrope. Rahul Patil, CTO of Anthropic, is an earthy, cricket-loving, dosa-chowing Bengaluru huduga (lad) whose head is not in the clouds, but whose career, spanning Microsoft to Amazon to Oracle, certainly has been.
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