Anthropic CTO shares love story from ‘very strict’ PES University in Bengaluru

The chief technology officer of American startup Anthropic remembered his Bengaluru roots during a speaking engagement in the city yesterday. Rahul Patil revealed that he was born and raised in Bengaluru, and even met his wife while studying at the city’s PES University.Rahul Patil is the CTO of Anthropic, the American startup behind the AI assant Claude.Patil was speaking at the Anthropic Builder Summit in Bengaluru. Anthropic, among the world’s fastest growing AI startups, has just opened an office in the Indian city. The company’s CTO revealed that his completed his schooling and undergraduate studies from Bengaluru before moving to the US, where he has been based for the last several years.Dating in Bengaluru’s ‘very strict’ universityPatil delivered the keynote address of the Anthropic Builder Summit at the company’s Bengaluru office, where he revealed that he studied at Baldwin’s and St Joseph’s in Bengaluru before joining PES. It was at PES that he met his wife in the first year of their engineering programme.Patil joked about dating his wife at PES despite the university’s “strict” rules, calling it an example of how the impossible becomes possible in India.“How many of you know how strict the PES University is?” the CTO of Anthropic asked the audience, eliciting some whoops and cheers from some.“Okay, it’s very, very strict, folks,” he added for the benefit of those who might not know of the university’s reputation.“So fun fact, I met my wife in the first year of engineering. We started dating right then, even though the college was strict.“As I said, even the impossible is possible in India,” the CTO of Anthropic concluded to laughter from the audience.Who is Rahul Patil?Rahul Patil is the Chief Technology Office of Anthropic. Anthropic is an American AI company founded in 2021 former OpenAI researchers. It is one of the world’s fastest growing tech startups, best known for its flagship AI assant, Claude.Patil joined Anthropic in October 2025. In his role as CTO, he oversees product, compute, infrastructure, inference, data science, and security.Patil brought 20 years of experience to Anthropic. Before joining the startup, he served as the CTO of Stripe.His work experience includes stints at Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Oracle.Patil was born and raised in Bengaluru. He completed his Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from PESIT in 2002.After that, he went to the US to obtain a masters from Arizona State University. Patil also completed an MBA from the University of Washington.