FIVE HUNDRED MILLION TO 30 BILLION, AND THE SBF IN THE PRISON WON THE MOST VALUABLE COMPANY IN AI
by Deepwater TechFlow
Anthropic is now the most important AI company on the planet, perhaps none。
Its Claude large model is deployed in the Pentagon, United States intelligence agencies and national laboratories, and is used by United States forces to screen intelligence analysis and targets for military strikes against Iran。
Its annualized revenue surged from zero to $14 billion in less than three years, and in February 2026, Anthropic completed a $30 billion round of G-finance and post-investment valuations exceeded $38 billion. Amazon, Google, Inverda, Microsoft, tech giants lined up in line for money。
OVER THE PAST FEW WEEKS, IT HAS BEEN ENGAGED IN A GAME WITH THE PENTAGON ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF AI, WHICH IS OF WORLDWIDE CONCERN。
And in the early financing history of this company, there is a name that is so encouraging:Sam Bankman-Fried。
In April 2022, ChatGPT did not exist, and AI's track was far from today's heat. The SBF, through his controlled hedge fund Alameda Research, hit the Anthropic B wheel at $500 million, at 86 per cent of the entire round of financing and took about 8 per cent of the equity. Seven months later, the FTX empire collapsed, and the SBF became the biggest fraud in the history of encrypted currency, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and $500 million was deposited by FTX clients。
BUT IF THE SBF IS NOT CAUGHT, IF THE MONEY COMES LEGALLY, AT TODAY'S 380 BILLION, 8 PER CENT IS THEORETICALLY WORTH OVER $30 BILLION. FIVE BILLION TO 30 BILLION, WITH A RETURN OF MORE THAN 60 TIMES, IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF VENTURE CAPITAL, THIS ABSOLUTE PROFIT IS HIGH ENOUGH。
An encrypted fraudster who is serving a sentence in a federal prisonALMOST FINISHED THE CRAZIEST BET IN AI'S INVESTMENT HISTORY。
SBF, why did you find Anthony in 2022? Why would he hit 500 million? Why did Anthropic take the money
the answer is hidden in a circle called “ effective altruism &rdquo。
A rental house, a sport, a check
In San Francisco in the mid-2010s, a group of people lived in the same type of rental house and attended the same type of gathering to read the same type of papers and to believe in the same philosophy。
The philosophy is called Effective Altriism, EA. The central proposition is simple: charity should not be perceived, but measured. Each dollar should flow to mathematical energy & ldquo; maximization of the good fruit & rdquo; the direction, and, in the view of an important branch of EA, the number one existential risk to humanity is not nuclear war, not plague, but uncontrolled artificial intelligence。
Dario Amodei is in this circle。
He was the 43rd signatory of Giving What We Can Page and promised to donate at least 10% of his income, and he was a fan of GiveWell as early as 2007 or 2008。
He lived in a shared rental house with two people: one co-founder of Holden Karnofsky, GiveWell and Open Philantropy, one of the most influential fund-allocations of the EA movement; and another Paul Christiano, a core researcher in the field of alignment. Dario and Paul were at the same time technical advisers to Open Philantropy。
Karnofsky married Dario's sister Daniela. After the engagement, the couple once lived with Dario. In January 2025, Karnofsky quietly joined Anthropic as &ldquao; technical &rdquao; responsible for security strategy. When Fortune's journalists found out about this, Anthropic did not even announce the appointment。
It's a close social network。
Anthropic's early employee Amanda Askel was the ex-wife of William MacAskill, one of the founders of the EA campaign. She was the 67th signatory of the GWWC, and the doctoral thesis was written on the core of the philosophy of EA, how to deal with infinity in ethics。
Anthropic, the most important governance body, “ long-term interest trust, ” Long-Term Benefit Trust, theoretically holding significant control over the company, with three of its four members coming directly from the EA system: Neil Buddy Shah, former Managing Director of GiveWell, CEO Zach Robinson of the Centre for Effective Littoralism, and CEO Kanika Bahl of the long-funded Evidence Action。
The three largest gold owners in the history of the EA movement are all early investors in Anthropic, the co-founder of Facebook, Dustin Moskovitz, the co-founder of Skype, Jaan Tallinn, and Sam Bankman-Fried。
This is the real path that the SBF can find for Anthropic, not the vision of a genius investment, not the far-flung judgment of the AI track, but the financial cycle within the circle:EA MONEY FLOWS TO EA PROJECTS THAT SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF EA DEFINITION。
SBF believes in a more radical one in EA, &ldquao; making money &rdquao; starting to give. He resigned from the Wall Street Quantification Agency, Jane Street, to invest in encrypted currency, openly claiming that his purpose was not personal wealth, but &ldquao; altruism &rdquao; and to earn as much money as possible before investing it in the direction that would have the greatest positive impact. And Anthropic's mission, “ safely develop a strong AI” almost the standard EA prescription for the existence of sexual risks。
In May 2021, Jaan Tallinn took the Anthropic A wheel, $124 million, Moskovitz followed. In April 2022, SBF voted for Round B and wrote a check of $500 million in one breath, representing 86 per cent of the $580 million in total financing. Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh and James McClave of Jane Street。
It's a good thing that you're on the list. Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda, Nishad Singh, Director of Engineering of FTX, Jane Street, former owner of SBF。
THIS 580 MILLION ROUND B, ACTUALLY COMES ALMOST ENTIRELY FROM THE SBF AND ITS SURROUNDING CONTROLLED POOL。
Red flag and compromise
Dario Amodei is not stupid。
Later, in an in-depth interview, he said that the SBF had looked like a &ldquao; &rdquao, a person who looked at AI and cared about safety; and Anthropic, which was in line with the direction in which Dario said: He sensed &ldquao; enough red flags &rdquao。
So he made a decision: to take the money, but to isolate the governance structure. SBF receives a non-voting share and is excluded from the board. Dario then evaluated the behaviour of SBF & ldquo; much more extreme and worse than I thought; ” three “ mouch more & rdquo; folding together。
This decision will prove extremely clever in the future. But it also leaves a sharp question: If there are so many dangerous signals that need to be isolated on the governance structure, why is it taken
You can say that the AI financing environment at the beginning of 2022 is far from as hot as today, and Anthropic needs a lot of money to build up the math, and an investor willing to come up with $500 million at once, no matter how many & ldquo; red flag & rdquo; it's hard to find。
But there is a more subtle reason: in the logic of the EA circle, the source of funding & ldquo; cleanliness & rdquo; never given priority. What matters is &ldquao of finance; effectiveness &rdquao; can it do more for you? The entire SBF wealth narrative is based on this:making money is a means, doing good is an end, so the way to make money can be less critical, as long as the final output is “ good ” big enough。
This logic reached the extreme of crime in the hands of SBF, but at the moment when he invested in Anthropic, it still seemed to be a radical but not illegal philosophical choice。
After collapse: a black comedy
The story behind it, everyone in the encryption ring knows it。
In November 2022, CoinDesk exposed Alameda ' s balance sheet, and Zhao Chang Peng announced the sale of FTT, crowding the tide over FTTX, and the Empire collapsed within nine days. SBF was arrested, extradited, tried and sentenced to 25 years in March 2024. The 8 per cent interest in Anthropic, together with all assets, was frozen in insolvency proceedings。
One of the court's exclusions from the trial is worth mentioning。
SBF ' s defence counsel attempted to use the Anthropic investment as “ Vision ” evidence, “ see, he was not just a waste, and he made an investment decision &rdquo, whose valuation had doubled。
Public Prosecutor Damian Williams responded strongly: whether or not the investments were profitable had nothing to do with the fraud charges. You stole other people's money to invest and earn or steal. The judge accepted the prosecution ' s opinion and Anthropic ' s name was excluded from the trial。
THE PROSECUTION ADDED A KNIFE TO IT: ISN'T FTX THE BEST COUNTER-EDITION? THE 2021 ANNUAL VALUATION, 18 BILLION, AND THE 2022 ANNUAL VALUATION, 32 BILLION, ARE WORTHLESS TODAY。
The auction is then liquidated。
In March 2024, the first round of the $884 million valuation。
The largest buyer, the Abu Dhabi Sovereign Fund, invested $500 million, exactly the same amount as SBF. The second largest buyer was Jane Street, SBF and Caroline Ellison, Jane Street's Quantification Research Manager, Craig Falls, who even had 20 million people involved. SBF's first job after MIT was to be a trader at Jane Street, and now the old boss paid to buy back the shares that former employees bought with stolen money。
TWO ROUNDS TO RECOVER 1,340 MILLION. THIS MONEY FLOWS TO THE FTX CREDITOR COMPENSATION POOL AND SERVES AS AN IMPORTANT SOURCE OF FUNDING FOR THE RECOVERED DEPOSITS OF AFFECTED USERS。
What if the liquidation team didn't sell it
In February 2026, Anthropic completed the G round of $30 billion in financing, with a post-investment valuation of $380 billion. If it's not diluted, then 8% of the theoretically from 1340 million to 30 billion. The liquidation teams, of course, did not choose to do so, but the difference between this number, 1.34 billion vs, and potentially over $30 billion, is the key to understanding why this story is still being discussed。
IT'S THE WHOLE FTX BANKRUPTCY, THE BIGGEST REGRET。
EA COLLECTIVE FORGET
Anthropic does not need to dwell on his size and influence today, but one interesting thing is that this company is systematically moving away from the EA movement。
Its seven co-founders committed to contributing 80 per cent of their personal wealth, which in current valuations alone is worth about $38 billion. Nearly 30 Anthropic employees signed up for the EA conference in San Francisco, more than twice as many as OpenAI, Google Deepmind, XAI and Meta super-intelligence laboratories combined。
But Daniela Amodei, in an interview with Wired, said: “ I am not an expert in effective altruism. I don't agree with that term. My impression is that it's a little out of date. &rdquao; the man who said that, the husband, one of the most influential money distributors of the EA movement, had just joined her company。
This & ldquo; EA money, EA users, EEA shared houses, but not recognized as EA&rdquao; gesture became understandable after the SBF case. The collapse of FTX brought the reputation of the EA movement to the bottom of the valley. Anthropic needs to distance itself from this label, just as any smart company cuts when there is a negative connection to the brand。
But the truth is there:Anthropic's founding logic is derived from the core of the EA community about the existence of risks in AI; its early financing comes almost entirely from funds in the EA network; its governance structure is run by people in the EA system。
The parallel universe in prison
Sam Bankman-Fried is now in federal prison. As early as 2049. By then he was 57 years old。
DURING HIS TIME IN PRISON, THE AI COMPANY, WHICH HE INVESTED IN STOLEN MONEY, HAD SURPASSED THE $380 BILLION VALUATION AND WAS PLAYING A WORLD-RENOWNED GAME WITH THE PENTAGON ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF AI, WHOSE FOUNDERS WERE REGULAR VISITORS TO THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE HILL OF CONGRESS. IF EVERYTHING IS LEGAL, THE $500 MILLION BET IS ENOUGH TO MAKE SBF ONE OF THE HIGHEST-REWARD VENTURE INVESTORS OF THE TIME。
SBF “ Make Money ” and Anthropic “ Safe Development AI ” Sharing the same bottom operating system, which can withstand unusual means and risks for good enough。
SBF has pushed this logic beyond the crime boundary, and Anthropic operates on the security side of the line, but its core propositions are — &mdquo; we must build the strongest AI in order to ensure the safety of AI ” it is in itself an ambitious, near self-proven bet。
They grow in the same soil。
In that soil, Dario and SBF used to go to the same parties, believe in the same philosophy, live at different points in the same social network. One headed towards the $380 billion-valued AI Empire, the other went into federal prison。
And the $500 million check connecting them is still the weirdest page in the history of Anthropic。
