Crypto’s Most Painful Cut. Anthropic IPO as Early as October, How Many FTXs Did SBF Actually Lose?

TradingKey - Anthropic's $380 billion valuation means SBF missed out on a $30 billion return, equivalent to FTX at its peak.

According to a Bloomberg report on March 27, AI company Anthropic is considering an IPO as early as this October and has already discussed the listing with several major Wall Street investment banks. In February this year, Anthropic completed its Series G funding round at a $380 billion valuation, raising $30 billion, led by GIC and Coatue Management, with participation from tech giants like Nvidia ( NVDA ), Microsoft ( MSFT) and other tech giants.

Founded in 2021, Anthropic is an American AI startup established by former OpenAI members. The company focuses on developing general-purpose AI systems and language models, with Claude as its flagship product. In its founding year, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, invested $500 million in Anthropic, acquiring an approximately 8% stake.

A year later, FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after a liquidity crisis caused by the misappropriation of customer funds. In the first half of 2024, the FTX liquidation team sold the 8% stake in Anthropic in two batches, realizing $1.3 billion. Had FTX held its position in Anthropic until now, the value of that stake would exceed $30 billion—enough to cover the $9 billion funding gap in the FTX bankruptcy case.

Historically, FTX reached a peak valuation of $32 billion. This means SBF missed out on nearly $30 billion in investment returns from Anthropic—equivalent to losing an entire FTX at its peak.

The massive missed return on FTX's investment in Anthropic is a regrettable case, but it likely won't be the last, and similar instances may occur in the future. Currently, many top crypto-native venture capital firms are investing in or are deeply involved with AI. For example, Paradigm announced in February that it was raising $1.5 billion to expand its investment scope to include AI, a16z crypto allocated $1.7 billion specifically for building AI infrastructure, and OKX Ventures and Binance Labs are both actively positioning themselves in the AI Agents space.

In fact, the AI trend has already swept into the crypto sector, forming a new 'AI ! Crypto' landscape, including decentralized computing (RENDER, TAO), AI agent payments (DAI, USDC), generative AI (FET, VIRTUAL), and AI memes.