While Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial begins, venture funding discussions for artificial intelligence firm Anthropic have given creditors of the insolvent crypto exchange FTX cause for optimism. Just days after reaching an agreement with Amazon.com Inc. in which the online retailer committed to investing up to $4 billion, Anthropic is in preliminary talks to fund $2 …
While Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial begins, venture funding discussions for artificial intelligence firm Anthropic have given creditors of the insolvent crypto exchange FTX cause for optimism. Just days after reaching an agreement with Amazon.com Inc. in which the online retailer committed to investing up to $4 billion, Anthropic is in preliminary talks to fund $2 billion. The Information, a tech news website, had previously reported on the financial conversations and stated that a deal might value the company at up to $30 billion. When news of the money became public, a group of FTX creditors known as the FTX 2.0 Coalition posted on X, the platform that replaced Twitter, that it might be able to make them whole. According to an internal document distributed before to last November’s bankruptcy filing and examined by Bloomberg News, FTX and its sister company, trading firm Alameda Research, invested $500 million in Anthropic. According to research firm PitchBook, FTX co-founder Bankman-Fried, former engineering chief Nishad Singh, and former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison were also investors in Anthropic.
One of the hottest startups in the AI boom is Anthropic, which created the AI chatbot Claude. As a result, equity in the startup is one of FTX’s most sought-after assets. Despite strong demand on the secondary market for Anthropic shares, the cryptocurrency exchange’s restructuring managers put a stop to a sale of its Anthropic stake last summer. One of FTX’s largest bets in its extensive venture portfolio is the startup. However, it may take some time for FTX creditors to recover their losses from an Anthropic sale. A stock exchange debut for the AI startup may be years away given the ongoing downturn in initial public offerings and the growing number of businesses choosing to remain private rather than go public.
As the trial of Bankman-Fried goes on, there is also the legal ambiguity surrounding FTX’s status. Authorities claim that Bankman-Fried utilized FTX customer funds improperly to invest in business ventures. In a bankruptcy filing, FTX also claimed that Ellison, who has already admitted guilt to counts of fraud, paid herself a bonus of $22.5 million that she shouldn’t have, using $10 million of it to fund an AI firm. Ellison only has one personal investment recorded on PitchBook: Anthropic.
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