US government sells Anthropic stakes seized from former FTX executives

Forfeited shares originally bought for $50 million during Anthropic's 2022 Series B could now be worth billions, but FTX victims haven't seen a dime yet

The US government quietly sold equity stakes in AI giant Anthropic that were seized from two former FTX executives, turning what started as a $50 million crypto-era investment into one of the most lucrative asset forfeitures in recent memory.

Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, and Nishad Singh, a former FTX engineering director, both forfeited their personal Anthropic holdings to the government as part of their criminal proceedings tied to the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire. The US Marshals Service then sold those shares to existing Anthropic investors in 2025.

From crypto convictions to AI windfalls

Ellison invested roughly $10 million and Singh put in about $40 million during Anthropic's Series B funding round in 2022. Both executives cooperated with federal prosecutors. Ellison pleaded guilty and testified against Bankman-Fried. Singh did the same. As part of their respective deals, Ellison forfeited her Anthropic shares in February 2025, and Singh followed suit in April 2025.

The US Marshals Service acquired the shares and found buyers among Anthropic's existing investor base. The exact sale price remains undisclosed. Estimates suggest the government may have netted somewhere between $250 million and $1.1 billion, depending on the valuation Anthropic was trading at in private markets during the sale window.

By May 2026, Anthropic reached a $965 billion valuation. At that price, the combined value of Ellison and Singh's original stakes would sit somewhere in the range of $4.17 billion to $5.03 billion.

FTX victims left waiting

As of late June 2026, none of the proceeds from the government's sale have been transferred to the FTX bankruptcy estate. Sunil Kavuri, a representative for FTX victims, has publicly advocated for the forfeited assets' proceeds to be directed toward victim compensation. The logic is straightforward: Ellison and Singh made those investments using resources connected to FTX and Alameda, so the returns should flow back to the people who lost money.

Forfeited asset proceeds go through a separate legal pipeline from bankruptcy distributions, and coordinating between the Department of Justice and the bankruptcy court has proven slow and complicated. The FTX bankruptcy estate has already been working to repay creditors through other recovered assets, and notably had previously liquidated its own separate position in Anthropic.

The broader context

Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers Dario and Daniela Amodei, has raised billions from investors including Google, Salesforce, and Amazon. Its Claude model competes directly with OpenAI's GPT series and Google's Gemini.

The Marshals Service's decision to sell to existing Anthropic investors suggests they opted for a clean, low-friction transaction. The shares were sold under forfeiture regulations set forth by Title 21 U.S.C. § 853.

Kavuri and other victim advocates will likely continue pushing for faster resolution. The sheer size of the potential payout -- hundreds of millions at minimum, and potentially exceeding $4 billion based on Anthropic's May 2026 valuation -- makes this one of the most consequential remaining pieces of the FTX cleanup.