In a notable endeavor to reconcile financial losses incurred by individuals and companies in the wake of FTX’s dramatic fall, the beleaguered cryptocurrency exchange has reached an agreement to divest its 29.4 million stakes in the artificial intelligence company, Anthropic, as unveiled in recent court filings. The collective worth of these stakes in Anthropic amounts to approximately $884 million.
This divestiture received the green light from U.S. Federal Judge John Dorsey last month, pursuant to a motion lodged within the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.
The purchase of the Anthropic shares has attracted a broad spectrum of investors, including ATIC Third International Investment Company, Jane Street Global Trading, and a collection of funds overseen by Fidelity Management & Research Company. Leading the pack, ATIC Third International Investment Company has committed to acquiring 16,664,167 shares with a $500 million investment.
Additional buyers embody entities like The Ford Foundation and Picton Mahoney Asset Management, alongside Anthropic itself—indicating a strategic move by more than twenty parties vying for a stake in the AI developer, possibly to regain control of its shares.
Among the buyers linked to Anthropic are MW LSVC Anthropic, LLC, Anthropic Pine Road LLC, and other entities within the Hiive Anthropic Series, collectively securing 1.6 million shares valued at $47.8 million.
At the time of reporting, Anthropic had yet to provide a commentary on these developments to media inquiries from Decrypt.
Speculation concerning FTX’s strategy to offload its significant holding in Anthropic began to surface last summer after a federal judge overseeing the FTX bankruptcy saga approved a proposal allowing FTX to liquidate some assets to reconcile debts as early as January.
The exact timeline of the share sale became a focal point of intrigue following reports that FTX was exploring avenues to divest its holdings in the AI firm, which challenges OpenAI. The process encountered a halt later without any forewarning.
In its asset liquidation spree, FTX has also parted ways with its derivatives trading platform, LedgerX, for $50 million—a figure starkly lower than the $300 million outlay in 2021. Additionally, it liquidated assets in cryptocurrencies such as Solana, Ethereum, and Bitcoin, totaling $3.4 billion.