FTX’s former investment in artificial intelligence company Anthropic could be worth more than $30 billion at the company’s proposed IPO price, nearly two years after the bankrupt crypto exchange sold the entire position for about $1.34 billion.
Anthropic’s latest SEC filing sets an expected IPO price range of $70 to $78 per share.
After adjusting FTX’s former holding for Anthropic’s September 2026 stock split, the position could be worth roughly $31.2 billion to $34.7 billion at that proposed range.
The comparison is hypothetical.
FTX no longer owns the shares, and the IPO price has not yet been finalized.
FTX originally invested $500 million in Anthropic
FTX and Alameda Research invested $500 million in Anthropic in 2021.
At the time, the AI company was still in an earlier stage of development.
The investment initially gave the FTX group a 13.56% ownership stake.
That position was later diluted by additional Anthropic funding rounds.
By early 2024, FTX’s stake had fallen to approximately 7.84%.
Anthropic stake became part of the bankruptcy estate
FTX collapsed in November 2022.
After the bankruptcy, its Anthropic investment became one of the major assets controlled by the bankruptcy estate.
Administrators began evaluating how to convert assets into cash for customer and creditor distributions.
The Anthropic stake was particularly valuable because the AI company had continued raising capital at increasingly high valuations.
Bankruptcy court approved the sale in 2024
In February 2024, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey approved FTX’s plan to sell its Anthropic shares.
Some customers had objected to the transaction.
They argued that the money used for the original investment had come from customer deposits.
Despite those objections, the estate moved forward with the sale as part of its broader recovery strategy.
FTX sold the Anthropic stake in two batches
The bankruptcy estate did not sell the entire investment in a single transaction.
The first sale involved approximately 29.47 million Anthropic shares.
Those shares were sold for roughly $884.1 million.
The transaction closed in April 2024.
A second sale followed in June.
That deal covered about 15 million additional shares and generated approximately $452 million.
Together, the two sales brought the estate nearly $1.34 billion.
FTX made a large profit on the original investment
FTX had originally invested $500 million.
The bankruptcy estate later sold the position for roughly $1.34 billion.
That means the investment generated about $836 million more than the original cost before associated expenses.
At the time, the sale represented a substantial recovery for the bankruptcy estate.
However, Anthropic’s valuation has increased dramatically since then.
Anthropic IPO puts the former stake in a different light
Anthropic’s November 10 SEC filing proposes an IPO price between $70 and $78 per share.
The company plans to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker ANT.
Anthropic completed a 10-for-1 stock split on September 17, 2026.
That split increases the number of shares represented by earlier investments while proportionally reducing the value per share.
After adjusting for the split, FTX’s previously sold position would correspond to approximately 445.4 million Anthropic shares.
Former FTX stake could be worth $31.2B to $34.7B
At $70 per share, the hypothetical value of the former position would be approximately $31.18 billion.
At the top of the proposed range, $78 per share, the value would rise to roughly $34.74 billion.
That upper estimate is almost 26 times the amount FTX received when it sold the shares in 2024.
The comparison highlights how dramatically Anthropic’s valuation has risen in less than two years.
The $34.7 billion figure is not money available to creditors
It is important to distinguish hypothetical value from actual bankruptcy recoveries.
FTX no longer owns the Anthropic shares.
The bankruptcy estate sold the entire position in 2024.
That means creditors are not entitled to the current market value of those shares simply because Anthropic is preparing for an IPO at a much higher valuation.
The estate received the sale proceeds at the time of disposal.
IPO pricing has not been finalized
Anthropic’s proposed price range can still change.
The company has not yet completed the offering.
Final pricing will depend on investor demand, market conditions and decisions made before the listing.
The post-IPO market price could also move significantly above or below the offering price.
Therefore, the $31 billion to $34.7 billion range should be viewed only as an estimate based on the current filing.
Anthropic could be valued above $1 trillion
The proposed IPO range implies an enormous valuation for the AI company.
At $70 to $78 per share, Anthropic could be valued at approximately $1.26 trillion to $1.41 trillion on a fully diluted basis.
That would place it among the world’s most valuable technology companies.
The valuation also explains why FTX’s former stake now looks so valuable in hindsight.
Anthropic plans to sell 825 million Class A shares
The amended prospectus proposes an offering of 825 million Class A shares.
Approximately 801.35 million of those shares would be newly issued by Anthropic.
Another 23.65 million shares would be sold by existing shareholders.
The offering could therefore raise tens of billions of dollars for the company.
At the top of the proposed range, the IPO would represent one of the largest public offerings ever attempted.
Who bought FTX’s Anthropic shares?
The bankruptcy estate sold the position to a range of institutional and private investors.
The largest buyer in the first transaction was ATIC Third International Investment Company, associated with Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala.
It purchased approximately 16.66 million shares for nearly $500 million.
Other buyers included:
- Jane Street Global Trading
- Fidelity-managed funds
- HOF Capital
- G Squared
Those investors now stand to benefit from Anthropic’s sharply higher valuation if the IPO proceeds near the proposed range.
Mubadala-linked investment could now be worth billions more
The roughly $500 million block acquired by the Mubadala-linked investor could now be worth approximately $11.7 billion to $13 billion after accounting for the stock split and proposed IPO pricing.
That represents an extraordinary increase in paper value.
However, the final realized return will depend on several factors.
Those include the final IPO price, post-listing performance and any restrictions on when the investor can sell.
G Squared also bought a significant position
G Squared purchased approximately 4.5 million shares from the FTX estate for $135 million.
Like the other buyers, its position would have expanded proportionally through Anthropic’s stock split.
At the proposed IPO valuation, the investment would be worth many times the original purchase price.
The exact value will depend on the final listing terms.
FTX sold at around $30 per share
The 2024 bankruptcy sales were conducted at roughly $30 per share before adjusting for Anthropic’s later stock split.
At the time, that price reflected the private-market valuation available to the estate.
Selling provided certainty and liquidity.
Holding the shares would have exposed the estate to both additional upside and significant risk.
Why the bankruptcy estate sold instead of holding
Bankruptcy estates generally prioritize recovering and distributing assets rather than making long-term speculative investments.
Anthropic was still a private company in 2024.
There was no guarantee it would eventually reach a trillion-dollar valuation.
Its shares were also illiquid compared with publicly traded securities.
Selling the position gave the FTX estate cash that could be used in its creditor repayment process.
Hindsight makes the sale look expensive
Looking back from the proposed IPO valuation, the sale appears costly.
A $1.34 billion position could now theoretically be worth more than $30 billion.
But that comparison benefits from information that was not available at the time.
Anthropic still faced significant business, financing and competitive risk in 2024.
A bankruptcy administrator also has different responsibilities from a venture capital investor willing to hold an asset for many years.
Anthropic’s valuation has surged rapidly
Anthropic’s rise reflects the extraordinary amount of capital flowing into artificial intelligence companies.
The company’s May 2026 funding round valued it at approximately $965 billion.
The proposed IPO valuation of as much as $1.41 trillion would represent another major increase.
That rapid appreciation has transformed the value of early Anthropic investments.
AI boom created enormous gains for early investors
Companies developing large artificial intelligence models have attracted huge amounts of capital.
Investors have been willing to assign extremely high valuations to businesses seen as potential leaders in AI infrastructure and software.
Anthropic has emerged as one of the most prominent companies in that group.
The result is that relatively early investments have appreciated dramatically.
Anthropic also plans a $26 billion private placement
The IPO is not the only major financing transaction under consideration.
Anthropic also plans a $26 billion private placement.
The participants include several major technology companies.
Among them are:
- Microsoft
- Nvidia
- AMD
- Broadcom
- Micron
- TSMC Partners
The private placement is expected to close after the IPO, subject to the conditions described in Anthropic’s filing.
Big Tech participation reinforces the scale of the deal
The presence of major technology companies underscores the strategic importance investors are placing on Anthropic.
AI models require enormous amounts of computing infrastructure.
Chipmakers, cloud providers and software companies all have reasons to deepen their exposure to leading AI developers.
The private placement therefore reflects both financial and strategic interest.
Anthropic IPO has attracted crypto market attention
The offering is also drawing attention from crypto investors.
Bitget recently introduced Anthropic-linked subscriptions through its IPO Prime platform.
Those products provide users with indirect pre-IPO exposure rather than direct ownership of public Anthropic shares.
Participation fees and product structures differ from conventional brokerage access.
The interest shows how major AI listings are increasingly overlapping with crypto investment markets.
FTX’s Anthropic story is one of bankruptcy’s biggest “what ifs”
FTX’s investment has become one of the more striking hypothetical outcomes from the bankruptcy.
The estate successfully turned a $500 million investment into roughly $1.34 billion.
That was already a strong financial result.
Yet the same position could now be valued above $30 billion based on Anthropic’s proposed IPO price.
The difference creates an unavoidable question about what creditors might have received if the estate had held the shares longer.
Creditors did not have a guaranteed claim to future upside
That hypothetical needs to be treated carefully.
Creditors were entitled to recover value from the bankruptcy estate under the approved restructuring process.
They did not have a guaranteed right to benefit from every future increase in the value of assets the estate had already sold.
Once the shares were converted into cash, the estate no longer participated in Anthropic’s future upside.
Holding the shares would also have added risk
Had the bankruptcy estate kept the Anthropic position, the outcome could have been very different.
The IPO might have been delayed.
Anthropic’s valuation could have fallen.
Regulatory conditions could have changed.
The company could also have faced competition or financing problems.
Holding would therefore have exposed creditor recoveries to additional uncertainty.
Liquidity matters in bankruptcy
One of the main objectives in a bankruptcy is turning uncertain assets into liquid funds that can be distributed.
Private-company shares can be difficult to value and sell.
An approved $1.34 billion transaction gave the estate a known amount of cash.
That certainty can be especially important when administrators are trying to establish repayment schedules.
The IPO could create enormous gains for the buyers
If Anthropic lists within the proposed range, the institutional investors that acquired FTX’s former stake could be sitting on substantial unrealized gains.
Some positions could have multiplied more than 20-fold on paper.
However, paper gains are not the same as realized profits.
Investors may face lockups, selling restrictions and market-price volatility after the IPO.
Anthropic’s first trading price could differ sharply
The IPO price only determines the initial sale price.
Once the stock begins trading publicly, supply and demand will determine the market price.
If demand is extremely strong, shares could trade above the offering price.
If investors question the valuation, the stock could fall below it.
That uncertainty means the final value of FTX’s former position cannot yet be known.
What happens next
The next major step is for Anthropic’s registration statement to become effective.
The company will then finalize pricing and move toward public trading.
Anthropic has applied for a Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT.
Investors will be watching the final IPO price closely because it will determine the opening valuation.
Final thoughts
FTX’s former Anthropic investment has become one of the most dramatic missed-upside stories associated with the crypto exchange’s bankruptcy.
The company and Alameda Research originally invested $500 million.
The bankruptcy estate sold the full position for approximately $1.34 billion in 2024.
Based on Anthropic’s current proposed IPO price, those same shares could now be worth approximately $31.2 billion to $34.7 billion.
That does not mean FTX creditors lost a guaranteed $30 billion payout.
The shares had already been sold, and Anthropic’s current valuation was far from certain when the bankruptcy estate made that decision.
Still, the scale of the difference illustrates just how rapidly AI company valuations have increased and how valuable the Anthropic investment ultimately became for the institutions that bought it from FTX.
