The US government sold a confiscated block of Anthropic shares for $627 million. The funds were directed to the bankruptcy estate of the collapsed crypto exchange FTX for creditor compensation.
Nine investors purchased the securities, which are currently valued at approximately $3.94 billion against a total company valuation of $1.5 trillion. The buyers' names are not disclosed.
How the US government came to own Anthropic shares
In 2022, Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh invested $50 million in the young artificial intelligence systems company Anthropic. Ellison at the time ran the trading firm Alameda Research, which was affiliated with FTX. Singh was a top executive at the exchange.
A few months later, FTX collapsed. Both pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against the exchange's founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, who received 25 years in prison.
The court ordered the confiscation of their stake — that is, its transfer to the state as proceeds derived from a crime. By April 2025, the shares had already passed to the US government.
What the Anthropic IPO revealed
On October 26, Anthropic filed an S-1 — the mandatory document required before a stock exchange listing (IPO). It does not mention Ellison and Singh, but clearly states that 4,453,900 Series B preferred shares were confiscated from previous owners by court order, with which the company had no involvement.
This figure fully matches their $50 million investment. In October 2025, Anthropic bought these shares back from the government at $140.9676 per share and resold them to nine investors at the same price.
Who received the money and who received Anthropic shares
The money went to the FTX bankruptcy estate — the very pool from which the exchange's clients' losses are being compensated. Court documents confirm that at the end of 2025 the US Department of Justice transferred $638 million there.
The assets of the collapsed company are being distributed to creditors in stages, including a fifth payout in July of $900 million. The nine buyers ended up on the other side of the deal: their stakes could appreciate sixfold compared with the amount invested. The sale was organized by the US Marshals Service.
In 2024, the liquidators of the collapsed company sold Sam Bankman-Fried's personal $500 million stake in Anthropic for $1.3 billion. Anthropic now plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker ANT. Once trading begins, the market will determine the final value of both stakes.
Cryptalist analysis: The case demonstrates how the confiscation of crypto assets is turning into a systemic mechanism for returning funds to creditors: the state acted as a temporary holder of a highly liquid venture asset and locked in a profit before the IPO. For the market, this is a signal of growing transparency in settlements with those harmed by FTX's collapse, and for investors in the AI sector, a reminder that the liquidity of Anthropic's pre-IPO shares is already forming outside public trading and directly affects the company's valuation ahead of the listing.