$500 million went in at entry, $1.3 billion was sold off cheap—now worth $77.2 billion. The AI ace once bet on by SBF can now “make good” for 10 FTXs.

BlockBeats News, June 8 — As SBF officially files for pardon with U.S. President Trump today, a set of numbers continues to painfully sting everyone with knowledge outside the prison — the card he bought with client funds on the eve of the AI boom, which today has a book value of about $77.2 billion, nearly 10 times the amount of the FTX collapse.

In April 2022, "large language models" were still a niche term in academia. SBF led a $500 million Series B investment in Anthropic through Alameda Research, taking an 86% stake in the round and acquiring about 8% equity. At that time, Anthropic was valued at only $2.5 billion. Seven months later, FTX collapsed.

The operation of the takeover legal team, in hindsight, was a costly fire sale. In 2024, the bankruptcy liquidators will sell this equity in two batches, totaling about $1.3 billion in cash. Buyers include Abu Dhabi’s sovereign fund Mubadala and SBF’s former employer Jane Street — a rather ironic detail: the quantitative giant that nurtured him back then is now buying back the assets he purchased with illegal funds at a bargain price.

Since then, the AI wave has completely rewritten valuation logic. In May 2026, Anthropic completed a $65 billion Series H funding round led by Altimeter, Sequoia, and other institutions, raising its valuation to $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI for the first time and approaching the trillion-dollar mark. Based on this, the 8% stake from that year is now worth about $77.2 billion — 59 times the actual sale price of $1.3 billion, and nearly 10 times the $8 billion funding gap FTX faced that year.

SBF himself did not stay silent. He once posted on X criticizing the takeover lawyers: "The lawyers responsible for bankruptcy said Anthropic was worthless, then sold the equity for $1.3 billion. FTX never went bankrupt — it was the lawyers who, four hours after taking over the company, filed a fake bankruptcy to line their pockets."

The $8 billion gap and the $77.2 billion missed opportunity essentially stem from the same person and the same period of decision-making — the former was the cost of squandering client funds, and the latter was the era’s red opportunity he stepped on amid chaos. He saw the right track but used the wrong money, losing not due to misjudgment but due to compliance collapse.