FTX to Sell $884M of Anthropic Shares to Two Dozen Institutional Investors

The FTX bankruptcy estate has reached a deal to sell the majority of its shares in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic to two dozen institutional investors, raising $884 million.

According to Friday court filings, the top buyer is ATIC Third International Investment Company, a tech investment company wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala. ATIC has agreed to purchase 16,664,167 shares of Anthropic from FTX for $500 million.

Other buyers include Jane Street Global Trading – an affiliate of the erstwhile employer of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried – “certain funds” tied to Fidelity Investments and The Ford Foundation.

The sale of the Anthropic shares is a big win for the FTX estate, which pledged in January to pay back the defunct exchange’s customers 100% of the value of their holdings at the time of the exchange’s collapse. FTX’s FTT token climbed 10% on the news.

FTX and Alameda paid $500 million for the 8% stake in Anthropic in 2021. The subsequent AI boom fueled by ChatGPT’s soaring popularity caused the value of the shares to more than double by the time a New York bankruptcy judge gave the estate permission to sell them in February.

An earlier attempt to sell the shares in June 2023 ultimately fell through after months of due diligence stalled.

The profitable sale is in stark contrast to the firesale of other FTX assets, including the sale of LedgerX last year for $50 million. The exchange’s U.S. arm paid $298 for the firm in 2021.