Have you ever thought about the craziest AI bet in crypto history? There’s one, and its story is very strange.

At the helm of Anthropic, which is currently valued at $380 billion, an incident happened in April 2022. Sam Bankman-Fried, then seen as the brightest star in the crypto world, invested $500 million in Anthropic’s B series through the Alameda Research fund. All at once. He took 86% of the series. The AI sector wasn’t as hot as it is today, but SBF decided to place a bet on it.

Dario Amodei, the founder of Anthropic, must have felt a bit odd accepting that money. Later, in interviews, he said he had seen “enough red flags.” But he took the money. Why? Because a $500 million check wasn’t easy to come by at the time—especially in the amounts needed to build the computer power. But there’s a deeper reason: there was a movement called Effective Altruism, and SBF, Dario, and the people on Anthropic’s board—everyone of them was within the same social network.

The EA movement was built on a simple philosophy: making money is the means, doing good is the goal. So the source of the money didn’t matter much; what mattered was how much good it could do. With this logic, SBF had started piling money up in the crypto world, all “to save humanity.” Investing in Anthropic also seemed to fit within this philosophy: AI safety, existential risk, the future of humanity.

Then November 2022 arrived. CoinDesk revealed Alameda’s balance sheet. A wave of withdrawals began at FTX. In nine days, the empire collapsed. SBF was arrested, tried, and sentenced to 25 years in prison. That $500 million was actually the money of FTX customers.

Now the interesting part begins. What if everything had been legal? That $500 million would be worth $30 billion today. A 60x return. One of the biggest risk-capital bets in history. SBF is in federal prison, while Anthropic has transformed into a $380 billion company. They’re debating AI weapons with the Pentagon. The New York Times frequently covers Dario.

But Anthropic’s representative team had to sell their shares. In March 2024, Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala fund invested $500 million—exactly the same investment amount as SBF’s. Then Jane Street, SBF’s former employer, bought back its own shares. A total of $1.34 billion was recovered, and this money was distributed to the victims of FTX.

So the story goes like this: a scammer invested stolen money into an AI company. That company became one of the world’s most valuable AI ventures. The money was returned. The scammer is in prison. The company denies any connection to the EA movement of its founders. Dario’s wife, Holden Karnofsky, secretly joined Anthropic. They all came from the same San Francisco housing community.

This is one of the strangest stories in crypto history. On one side, the future of AI; on the other, theft and fraud. And in the middle, a $500 million check.