The US government has sold Anthropic shares forfeited by former FTX executives Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh, turning their combined $50 million investment into potentially billions of dollars in current value.
The sales were carried out by the US Marshals Service during 2025 after the executives surrendered their holdings as part of their criminal cases. Based on Anthropic’s latest private-market valuation, the same shares could now be worth roughly $2.6 billion to $5 billion.
Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, formally surrendered her Anthropic holdings in February 2025, while Singh, a former FTX engineer, followed in April. Both had invested in Anthropic during the artificial intelligence company’s 2022 Series B funding round.
Ellison invested around $10 million, while Singh committed approximately $40 million, according to the report. Their shares were later forfeited to the US government under federal criminal asset-forfeiture laws following their guilty pleas.
The US Marshals Service subsequently sold the private-company shares to existing Anthropic investors. The identities of the buyers and the final sale prices have not been disclosed.
Because the transactions were private, estimates of how much the government actually received vary widely. Figures cited in the report put the proceeds somewhere between $250 million and $1.1 billion, depending on Anthropic’s valuation at the time of each sale.
The shares would be worth considerably more today. Anthropic has seen its valuation rise sharply as demand for artificial intelligence products has surged. However, the government sold the shares before some of the company’s highest private-market valuations, meaning it would not have captured their full theoretical value today.
The fate of the proceeds has become another issue in the long-running FTX bankruptcy saga. As of late June 2026, the money had not been transferred to the FTX bankruptcy estate, which continues to distribute funds to creditors affected by the exchange’s collapse in November 2022.
FTX creditors have argued that the proceeds should ultimately help compensate victims because the original investments were linked to resources controlled by FTX and Alameda. However, criminal forfeiture proceeds follow a separate legal process from bankruptcy distributions.
U.S. Government Sold Anthropic Stakes in 2025 That Former FTX Executives Bought Cheaply in 2022
According to Business Insider, the U.S. government seized Anthropic shares held by former FTX executives Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh and sold them to existing investors in… pic.twitter.com/L8Bx3f0KGh
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 31, 2026
The government’s sale is also separate from the much larger Anthropic stake once owned directly by FTX. FTX had invested $500 million in Anthropic in 2021. The bankruptcy estate sold that investment in two transactions during 2024, raising roughly $1.3 billion.
Anthropic has since become one of the world’s most valuable private AI companies. Founded by former OpenAI researchers Dario and Daniela Amodei, it develops the Claude family of AI models and has attracted major backing from companies including Google, Amazon and Salesforce.
The story shows how dramatically the value of some FTX-era investments has changed. What began as two relatively modest investments by former executives has become a potentially multibillion-dollar asset story, even after the shares passed into government hands.
The question now is not only how much the US government received from the sales, but whether any of that money could eventually benefit the people who lost funds in the FTX collapse.
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