Potential buyers were supposedly eyeing FTX’s stake in the AI firm, which was up for sale to recuperate funds for creditors.
FTX’s proposed sale of its $500 million share in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic has purportedly been postponed. This could potentially delay the beleaguered crypto exchange’s attempts to address a remaining $2 billion deficit in its accounts.
On June 27, Bloomberg revealed — quoting individuals knowledgeable about the situation — that FTX’s advisory investment bank, Parella Weinberg Partners, halted the sale of FTX’s stake in Anthropic this month, even though several parties showed interest in acquiring the said stake.
A successful sale of the stake would contribute significantly to FTX’s financial recovery. According to a June 26 report by FTX’s restructuring head, John Ray, around $8.7 billion in user funds were misappropriated, of which nearly $7 billion has been reclaimed.
Before the pause, various buyers were supposedly attracted to FTX’s piece of Anthropic. Semafor reported in early June that FTX was showcasing the AI firm to potential investors.
At the time of its bankruptcy in November 2022, FTX owned $500 million worth of Anthropic stock, a figure that is expected to have significantly increased given the current AI boom.
On May 23, Anthropic achieved a reported valuation of $4.6 billion and raised $450 million in its latest funding round. The company offers an AI chatbot named “Claude,” which is claimed to be deployable for a range of applications including sales, customer service, and web searches.
When FTX declared bankruptcy, its stake in the AI firm was one of its most significant investments, second only to its reported $1.15 billion investment in crypto miner Genesis Digital Assets.
The report about the sale’s suspension emerged shortly after Ray’s report on the alleged mismanagement and mingling of FTX customer funds, which claimed that FTX needed to recover another $2 billion to possibly reclaim all assets.
The report also disclosed details about “grants” worth thousands of dollars allegedly made to various non-crypto-related projects.
The report also alleged investments in venture capital firms, a $243 million real estate portfolio in the Bahamas, donations to non-profits, and a political action committee run by Gabe Bankman-Fried — younger brother of FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
Parella Weinberg Partners and Anthropic were approached by Cointelegraph for a comment, but no immediate response was received.