FTX estate sold Anthropic for ~$1.3B; IPO-era estimates put the former stake in the tens of billions

What's the debate? A viral November 2026 explainer by @Orrovetch revived a running argument: that the FTX bankruptcy estate sold its Anthropic stake too early. FTX had put about $500 million into Anthropic before the exchange collapsed in 2022. In 2024 the estate sold the stake for roughly $1.3 billion in total (CNBC reported an $884 million majority sale to a Mubadala-aligned buyer and others; a second tranche brought the combined proceeds near $1.33 billion).

IPO-era contrast: Anthropic raised at a reported $965 billion valuation in May 2026 and has since filed toward an IPO. Benzinga, citing Anthropic's late-October S-1 and share counts for the former FTX position (about 445 million shares, ~2.5% fully diluted), put the sold stake at roughly $47 billion at a ~$105.71 pre-IPO share price, versus the ~$1.3 billion the estate actually received. An April 2026 graphic recirculated by Sam Bankman-Fried had put a hypothetical retained Anthropic holding near $82 billion at that earlier date.

Why it matters: The episode is a sharp illustration of how early AI equity concentrated value, and of the forced-sale trade-off bankruptcy estates face between locking in cash for creditors and riding a later boom.

Sources: CNBC (Mar 2024); Benzinga (Oct 2026); @Orrovetch on X (5 Nov 2026); prior SBF graphic @SBF_FTX (22 Apr 2026).