Sam Bankman-Fried’s $500 Million Investment Still Haunts Anthropic
Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) led a $580 million funding spherical into Anthropic in April 2022. Critics say the donor community he championed nonetheless amplifies the bogus intelligence (AI) security message his cash paid for.
The FTX founder holds no stake in the present day. Prosecutors pressured a sale of his shares to repay collectors. The efficient altruism community he backed, which funds causes it judges most pressing, stayed in place.
Where Bankman-Fried’s Anthropic Money Went
Bankman-Fried put roughly $500 million into Anthropic in 2021 for about an 8% stake. Anthropic builds the Claude chatbot.
Months after the April 2022 spherical, FTX collapsed. He was convicted of defrauding buyers of $3 billion and is serving 25 years.
BeInCrypto reported in June that the property sold that Anthropic stake for about $1.3 billion in 2024. It could be price greater than $30 billion at Anthropic’s newest $380 billion valuation.
Where the Network’s Money Goes Today
Dustin Moskovitz, a Facebook co-founder, invested in Anthropic in 2021. He sits on the board of Coefficient Giving, the grantmaker previously referred to as Open Philanthropy.
Coefficient is a significant backer of the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, which pays greater than 80 reporters at retailers together with Time, Bloomberg, and The Guardian. It says they’re unbiased.
Longview Philanthropy, one other efficient altruism group, funds Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR), which grades frontier fashions on danger. Its head, Paul Christiano, as soon as roomed with Anthropic chief govt Dario Amodei.
Anthropic individually pays about 1,000 folks skilled on Claude to embed inside greater than 400 nonprofits. It calls this system Claude Corps.
Critics Who Say Amodei Borrowed the Playbook
Brian Chau, a machine studying engineer, based the AI information web site Effort. He informed the New York Post that Amodei now seeks security guidelines that will additionally protect a longtime firm.
“So it’s no shock that he’s now copying actually the very same ways utilized by Sam Bankman-Fried in an effort to obtain regulatory monopoly.”
Chau mentioned these applications have been as soon as named efficient altruism as their objective. The wording modified to AI security after Bankman-Fried’s arrest in December 2022.
Amodei revealed a coverage essay in June in search of necessary third-party testing of frontier fashions. He didn’t handle the seize argument.
The Fight Amodei’s Push Landed In
Amodei’s remarks come as Washington strikes the opposite manner. Trump signed an order in December 2025 to preempt state AI legal guidelines and has called safety fears a hoax.
Some members of Congress say the burden of AI safety now rests on builders themselves.
Anthropic almost tripled its federal lobbying spending to $3.53 million within the first half of 2026.
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