BlockBeats report: On June 8, as SBF formally submitted a pardon application to U.S. President Trump today, a set of figures continues to sting all those in the know from outside prison— the asset he purchased with customer funds just before the AI boom, today has a book value of approximately $77.2 billion, nearly ten times the amount lost during the FTX collapse.
In April 2022, "large language models" were still a niche term within academia. SBF led Anthropic’s Series B round with a $500 million investment through Alameda Research, acquiring 86% of the round and approximately 8% equity. At the time, Anthropic was valued at just $2.5 billion. Seven months later, FTX collapsed.
Taking over the legal team’s operations, in hindsight, was a devastating fire sale. In 2024, the bankruptcy estate sold the equity in two tranches, raising approximately $1.3 billion. Buyers included Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala, and Jane Street—SBF’s former employer—an ironic twist: the quantitative giant that once trained him was now acquiring assets he had purchased with illicit funds at rock-bottom prices.
Subsequently, the AI wave completely rewrote the valuation logic. In May 2026, Anthropic completed a $65 billion Series H funding round led by Altimeter, Sequoia, and others, raising its valuation to $965 billion—surpassing OpenAI for the first time and nearing the $1 trillion threshold. Based on this valuation, the 8% equity stake from that year is now worth approximately $77.2 billion—59 times the actual sale price of $1.3 billion and nearly ten times FTX’s $8 billion funding gap at the time.
SBF did not stay silent. He previously posted on X, criticizing the court-appointed lawyers: “The lawyers who filed for bankruptcy claimed Anthropic was worthless, then sold the equity for $1.3 billion. FTX never went bankrupt—it was the lawyers who, four hours after taking control of the company, fabricated a fake bankruptcy to enrich themselves.”
An $8 billion shortfall and a $77.2 billion missed opportunity both stem from the same person’s decisions during the same period—the former the cost of squandering customer funds, the latter the windfall he seized amid chaos. He picked the right赛道 but used the wrong money, losing not due to poor judgment, but because of regulatory collapse.