--- title: The Anthropic Stake FTX Sold for $1.3 Billion Would Be Worth More Than $31 Billion at the IPO description: FTX sold the Anthropic shares it bought for $500 million for $1.34 billion in 2024. At the $70-$78 IPO range they would be worth $31.2-34.7 billion. author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-11-15T12:59:42.247Z updated: 2026-11-15T12:59:42.264Z canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/ftx-anthropic-stake-ipo image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/nasdaq-marketsite.webp categories: Markets, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence content_type: News region: United States publication: Sovereign Magazine about: - type: Organization name: FTX description: FTX was a cryptocurrency exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang in 2019. It filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, and its remaining assets are being paid out to creditors by the FTX Recovery Trust. industry: Cryptocurrency exchange - type: Organization name: Anthropic description: American artificial intelligence company that develops the Claude models. --- The Anthropic shares that FTX's bankruptcy estate sold in 2024 for $1.34 billion would be worth between $31.2 billion and $34.7 billion at the price range Anthropic set for its initial public offering, which is expected to price on November 18 and [start trading on Nasdaq](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/anthropic-stock-ticker-symbol) the next day. Sam Bankman-Fried's trading firm, Alameda Research, paid $500 million for the stake in April 2022, seven months before FTX collapsed. The estate sold it in two blocks in the spring of 2024 to raise cash for creditors, at about 2.7 times what Alameda had paid. Nobody involved in that sale knew that Anthropic's revenue would go from $4.6 billion in 2025 to an annual rate of $81 billion by the end of October 2026, the figure the company gives in its [prospectus](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2130357/000162828026072484/anthropicpbc-sx1ax2.htm). The gap has given Bankman-Fried, who is serving a 25-year sentence for fraud, a new version of the argument he has made since 2022: that FTX had the assets to repay its customers and failed only because it ran out of cash. The courts that convicted and sentenced him rejected that argument, and FTX's customers have already been repaid in dollars, with interest, without the shares. ## FTX Paid About $1.12 a Share and the Estate Sold at $3 Alameda's $500 million went into Anthropic's Series B round in April 2022, buying about 44.5 million preferred shares at $11.23 each. After the 10-for-1 stock split Anthropic carried out in September, that is about 445 million shares at roughly $1.12 each. Court documents filed during the sale put the stake at about 7.8% of the company. When FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, the shares became one of the largest assets the estate held. Judge John Dorsey of the US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware approved the sale in February 2024. Customers who objected argued that the shares had been bought with their money; the judge let the sale go ahead with their claim to the proceeds kept open. Andrew Dietderich, a lawyer for FTX, described the estate's approach at the time as "selling everything and putting the money in the bank." The first block, about 29.5 million shares, went for $884 million to buyers including ATIC Third International Investment Company, a fund linked to Abu Dhabi's Mubadala, which took about two-thirds of it, along with Jane Street, funds managed by Fidelity and HOF Capital. The remaining 15 million shares went in June 2024 for $452 million, with G Squared buying 4.5 million of them. Both blocks sold at about $30 a share, or $3 in today's terms, for a total of $1,336 million. ## The Shares Were Sold Before Anthropic's Revenue Took Off Anthropic's own figures show how much changed after the sale. The company raised money at a $61.5 billion valuation in March 2025 and at $965 billion in May 2026. From January to September this year it took in [$33.2 billion in revenue](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/anthropic-q3-revenue-amended-ipo-filing), against $2.5 billion a year earlier. At the $70 to $78 range, the [offering values Anthropic at up to $1.02 trillion](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/anthropic-ipo-price-range-roadshow) on its shares outstanding, and at up to about $1.4 trillion counting options and unvested shares. The investors who bought from the estate at the equivalent of $3 a share would hold about 23 to 26 times their money at the range, before any lock-up on their shares ends. The estate was not the only seller. In October 2025, Anthropic bought back 4,453,900 Series B shares from the US government, which had taken them through forfeiture in legal proceedings, and resold them the same day to nine investors for about $627 million, according to its prospectus. Business Insider reported that the shares had belonged to Caroline Ellison, Alameda's former chief executive, and Nishad Singh, FTX's former engineering chief, both of whom pleaded guilty and testified against Bankman-Fried. After the split, that block is about 44.5 million shares, worth $3.1 billion to $3.5 billion at the range. ## Bankman-Fried Says the Stake Shows FTX Could Have Repaid Everyone Bankman-Fried has long said that FTX was "illiquid, not insolvent", meaning it held enough assets to cover what it owed customers but could not turn them into cash fast enough when customers rushed to withdraw in November 2022. In posts on X this year, he has pointed to the Anthropic stake as an example, arguing that it was sold far below what it became worth. Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected the idea that later recoveries reduced the harm when he sentenced Bankman-Fried in March 2024. He found that customers had lost $8 billion, equity investors $1.7 billion and lenders $1.3 billion, and called the argument that victims would be paid in full misleading and speculative. > "A thief who takes his loot to Las Vegas and successfully bets the stolen money is not entitled to a discount." > — Judge Lewis Kaplan, at Sam Bankman-Fried's sentencing The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the conviction and the sentence on June 12, 2026. The panel found that the evidence of deliberate fraud outweighed the arguments about FTX's solvency that Bankman-Fried had wanted to put to the jury. Prosecutors told the trial court that the Anthropic investment was made with money the government alleged had been taken from FTX customers. ## Customers Have Been Repaid at November 2022 Prices The FTX Recovery Trust has paid out about $10 billion in five distributions since February 2025. After the fifth, in July 2026, most customers have received 105% of their allowed claims, and those with claims of $50,000 or less have received 120%. The claims were valued in dollars at the prices of November 2022, when FTX filed for bankruptcy and bitcoin traded near $16,000, so customers who held crypto on the exchange were [repaid below the later value of those coins](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/binance-hack-crypto-exchange-risk). Under bankruptcy rules, customers are owed their claims and interest, not the later rise in value of the estate's assets. Had the estate held the Anthropic shares until now, most of the extra value would have flowed to the parties below customers in the payout order, FTX's shareholders among them. Those shareholders, who put about $1.8 billion into FTX at valuations up to $32 billion, were wiped out. Sequoia, Temasek, SoftBank and Paradigm all wrote their stakes down to zero after the collapse. What the shares are worth on the day they trade depends on where Anthropic prices its offering on November 18 and how the stock opens the following morning. ## FAQ **Q: Does FTX still own a stake in Anthropic?** No. The FTX bankruptcy estate sold all of the roughly 44.5 million shares Alameda Research had bought, in two blocks in the spring of 2024, for a total of about $1.34 billion. The buyers included a Mubadala-linked fund, Jane Street, Fidelity funds, HOF Capital and G Squared. **Q: Who bought the FTX Anthropic stake?** The first block of about 29.5 million shares, sold for $884 million, went to ATIC Third International Investment Company, linked to Abu Dhabi's Mubadala, which took about two-thirds of it, along with Jane Street, Fidelity-managed funds and HOF Capital. The second block of about 15 million shares sold for $452 million in June 2024, with G Squared among the buyers. **Q: How much did Sam Bankman-Fried invest in Anthropic?** Alameda Research, his trading firm, invested $500 million in Anthropic's Series B round in April 2022. After Anthropic's 10-for-1 stock split in September 2026, the stake equals about 445 million shares, worth $31.2 billion to $34.7 billion at the IPO price range of $70 to $78.