The FTX estate unknowingly walked away from a multi-hundred-million-dollar windfall when it offloaded a $200,000 stake in AI startup Anysphere, which is now reportedly valued at $9 billion, according to the Financial Times.
The original investment was made by Alameda Research in April 2022 during Anysphere’s $400,000 pre-seed round, through an entity called Clifton Bay Investments LLC (formerly Alameda Research Ventures). When FTX collapsed into bankruptcy later that year, the estate sold the stake in April 2023 at cost.
Since then, Anysphere, developer of the AI coding assistant Cursor, has exploded in value, thanks to several high-profile funding rounds. It recently closed a $900 million raise led by Thrive Capital, pushing its valuation to $9 billion. Other backers include Andreessen Horowitz and Accel.
Cursor, dubbed the “vibe coding” app, offers AI-driven code generation, predictive editing, and whole-codebase comprehension — a fast-growing sector as software developers increasingly integrate AI tools into their workflows.
The missed gain is massive, though the FTX estate hasn’t disclosed the size of its original equity stake. Even a modest 1% stake could now be worth $90 million.
This isn’t the first misstep. In June 2024, the estate liquidated its shares in Anthropic, another AI unicorn, well before that company’s valuation soared. In March, Anthropic secured $3.5 billion in funding at a $61.5 billion valuation in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
The deal put a spotlight on FTX’s missed financial opportunity. In 2021, FTX and Alameda Research invested $500 million in Anthropic, securing an 8% stake in the company. If FTX had retained its holdings, that investment could have been worth as much as $2.5 billion, assuming dilution similar to other high-growth tech firms.
Instead, after FTX’s collapse in November 2022 amid fraud allegations, the bankruptcy estate liquidated its entire stake to repay creditors. FTX sold around two-thirds of its Anthropic shares in March 2024 for $884 million, with Abu Dhabi’s ATIC Third International Investment Company acquiring $500 million worth of shares. Jane Street, a trading firm tied to FTX’s founders, was also among the buyers.
By mid-2024, FTX offloaded its remaining Anthropic stake for $452 million, bringing the total proceeds from its investment to $1.3 billion—well below what it could have been if held longer.
With over $500 million in bankruptcy expenses already incurred, each missed opportunity weighs heavily on FTX creditors still hoping to recover lost funds.