What Happened to Bankman-Fried’s Anthropic Stake After FTX Collapsed
In 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried invested about $500 million in Anthropic through Alameda Research. At the time, the young AI company was valued at roughly $3.7 billion. Two of Bankman-Fried’s closest associates, Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh, also invested in Anthropic separately.
Just months later, FTX collapsed, and Bankman-Fried, Ellison, and Singh became defendants in criminal cases. The Anthropic stake that became part of the FTX bankruptcy proceedings was sold in 2024 for about $1.3 billion. Ellison’s and Singh’s personal stakes were seized by US authorities and, according to Business Insider, were later sold as well.
Anthropic continued to grow rapidly after those sales. Its latest funding round valued the company at $965 billion, while secondary-market transactions have implied a valuation of around $1.5 trillion. Had those stakes remained intact, they could be worth several times more today. Here is what happened to the Anthropic holdings linked to FTX and where the proceeds may have gone.
How FTX Became an Early Investor in Anthropic
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei along with a group of former OpenAI employees. Just a year later, the company raised $580 million in a Series B round. In its official announcement, Anthropic said the round was led by Sam Bankman-Fried. Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh were also among the investors.
At the time, Anthropic was focused on research into safe and steerable AI systems and was only beginning to build the large-scale infrastructure needed to train its models.
According to Reuters, the stake linked to Sam Bankman-Fried initially represented 13.56% of Anthropic’s equity. After subsequent funding rounds diluted the holding, it fell to 7.84%, but still remained one of FTX’s largest assets after the bankruptcy. Separately, Caroline Ellison invested about $10 million in Anthropic, while Nishad Singh invested roughly $40 million.
Anthropic was still far from its current scale. Claude had yet to become the major enterprise product it is today, and the generative AI market was only beginning to take shape. Yet the Anthropic investment ultimately became one of the strongest-performing assets associated with FTX.
The Collapse of FTX
FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022 after a liquidity crisis and revelations about the extensive use of customer funds. Sam Bankman-Fried was later convicted of fraud and other crimes and sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024. Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors.
After the bankruptcy, FTX’s new management began collecting and selling assets to recover money for customers and other creditors. Those assets included cryptocurrencies, startup stakes, venture investments, and other holdings. Anthropic gradually became one of the most significant positions in the portfolio as its valuation continued to rise even after FTX itself had collapsed.
By early 2024, the Anthropic stake had become valuable enough for its sale to require separate consideration in bankruptcy court. Some FTX customers objected, arguing that the shares may have been purchased with misappropriated customer funds and that the proceeds should therefore belong to customers. In February 2024, the court ultimately approved the sale.
$500 Million Became $1.3 Billion
During 2024, FTX sold its remaining Anthropic stake to several investors. The transactions generated about $1.3 billion, compared with an initial investment of roughly $500 million. The buyers included major institutional investors, while a significant portion of the stake went to an entity linked to Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala.
From the perspective of the bankruptcy process, the investment produced a strong result: the asset more than doubled in value and added to the funds available for creditor repayments. In 2024, the court approved FTX’s liquidation plan, which could distribute as much as $16.5 billion to customers. The Anthropic sale was one of the more notable parts of the asset-recovery process.
Anthropic’s subsequent growth, however, changed how that sale looks in hindsight. In September 2025, the company raised $13 billion at a $183 billion valuation. In February 2026, another round valued Anthropic at $380 billion. By May, it had raised a further $65 billion at a valuation of $965 billion. In just a few years, Anthropic’s valuation increased hundreds of times from the level at which the FTX-linked investment was originally made.
Given what happened next, the stake was sold well before Anthropic entered its fastest phase of valuation growth. But the bankruptcy managers were working toward a different objective at the time: converting illiquid assets into cash for customer repayments rather than maximizing potential long-term investment returns.
What Happened to Ellison’s and Singh’s Stakes
Caroline Ellison’s and Nishad Singh’s personal investments followed a different path. Their shares were not part of the stake sold through the FTX bankruptcy process. Instead, the US government seized them following the criminal proceedings.
Business Insider reports that assets of this kind are typically transferred to the US Marshals Service, which handles the disposal of complex forfeited property. Unlike the FTX bankruptcy, where major asset sales were disclosed in court filings, the fate of these stakes was far less transparent.
According to the publication, Ellison’s and Singh’s shares were sold in 2025 to existing Anthropic investors. The exact timing, sale price, and identities of the buyers were not publicly disclosed. The US Marshals Service declined to discuss the transaction, while the Department of Justice cited the confidentiality of the asset-management process.
Anthropic’s valuation changed rapidly throughout 2025 and 2026, so estimates of how much the government may have received vary widely. Business Insider cites estimates ranging from several hundred million dollars to more than $1 billion, depending on when the shares were sold and which valuation is used.
What the Stakes Could Be Worth Today
In 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried invested about $500 million in Anthropic through a related entity. The original holding represented 13.56% of the company and was diluted to 7.84% after subsequent financing rounds. That stake was sold through the FTX bankruptcy process in 2024 for roughly $1.3 billion.
If the stake had remained intact and still represented 7.84% of Anthropic today, it would be worth about $75.7 billion at a $965 billion valuation. This is only a rough estimate and does not account for further dilution from later funding rounds, but it illustrates the scale of Anthropic’s subsequent growth.
Caroline Ellison invested about $10 million in Anthropic, while Nishad Singh invested roughly $40 million. By the time their stakes were reportedly sold in 2025, they had already appreciated significantly.
In May 2026, Anthropic raised another round at a $965 billion valuation. Secondary-market transactions have implied a valuation of around $1.5 trillion, while a potential IPO has been discussed at levels as high as $2 trillion.
Had Ellison’s and Singh’s stakes remained in place, their combined value today could be around $2.6 billion to $5 billion, depending on the valuation used and the extent to which their holdings were diluted by later rounds. In other words, roughly $50 million invested in 2022 could potentially have turned into a multibillion-dollar asset.
Where the Proceeds From Ellison’s and Singh’s Shares May Have Gone
The Anthropic stake linked to FTX was sold through the bankruptcy process, so the proceeds went toward repayments to customers and creditors. Ellison’s and Singh’s stakes were different: once seized, they were controlled by the US government.
The Department of Justice can direct forfeited assets into compensation programs for victims. Prosecutors have previously said that such payments can be made either directly or in coordination with the FTX bankruptcy administrators. The Department of Justice also told Business Insider that compensating victims remains one of its priorities.
However, as of the end of June 2026, FTX’s public reporting did not show a separate payment that could clearly be linked to the sale of Ellison’s and Singh’s Anthropic shares. In 2025, FTX received about $638 million from assets previously seized by the Department of Justice, but nearly all of the publicly identified portion was tied to Robinhood shares owned by Bankman-Fried. FTX administrators expect another roughly $400 million from the government, although that amount includes other assets as well.
The exact destination of the Anthropic sale proceeds therefore remains unclear. The US Marshals Service declined to disclose details of the transaction, while the Department of Justice cited confidentiality rules governing forfeited assets. Lawyers interviewed by Business Insider said the final decision on how such funds are distributed remains with federal authorities.
What the FTX and Anthropic Story Shows
Against the backdrop of FTX’s collapse, the Anthropic investment stands out as an unusual contrast. Bankman-Fried’s business empire went bankrupt, yet the early investment in Anthropic became one of the strongest investments associated with his circle. A stake acquired when the company was worth only a few billion dollars could have been worth tens of billions just a few years later.
The story also reflects how much the market for large private companies has changed. A growing share of value creation can now happen before an IPO. Anthropic came close to a $1 trillion valuation while still privately held, meaning much of its most dramatic growth occurred before public-market investors had access.
