FTX Cleared to Sell Anthropic Stake by US Court for Customer Compensation

[The Guru=Reporter Jung Deung Yong] A U.S. court has approved the sale of the stake in Anthropic held by the cryptocurrency exchange FTX that went bankrupt in 2022. FTX plans to use the proceeds from the sale of the Anthropic stake to compensate its customers.

John Dorsey, a federal bankruptcy judge in Wilmington, Delaware, approved the sale of FTX’s 7.84% stake in Anthropic on the 23rd, saying that FTX reached an agreement with a customer group. The value of this stake is known to be about $1.4 billion.

According to court documents, FTX acquired a 13.56% stake in Anthropic by investing $500 million in 2021. Subsequent investments, including $4 billion from Amazon.com, reduced FTX’s stake to 7.84%.

Andy Deitderich, an attorney for FTX, said, “As interest in AI and large-scale language models has increased, the value of Anthropic’s stock has also risen significantly.” He added, “We will maintain the flexibility to sell the stock at the most optimal time.”

FTX customers have claimed that FTX did not own the Anthropic stake, as it was purchased with funds embezzled from customer deposits. However, an agreement that the proceeds from the sale of FTX’s stake in Anthropic belongs to FTX customers led to the court’s approval of the sale.

Attorney Deitderich explained that they plan to repay the proceeds from the sale of the Anthropic stake to customers and have sufficient cash to prove ownership of Anthropic stock to a specific customer group that can convince the court. The cash holdings of FTX, as claimed by Attorney Deitderich, amount to $6.4 billion.

FTX plans to determine the customer repayment amount based on the current increased value of the cryptocurrency, not the value at the time of bankruptcy in November 2022.

Meanwhile, a court found Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, guilty of fraud and money laundering in November of last year. The sentencing trial is scheduled for the 28th of next month, and a legal community expects a sentence of up to 115 years in prison.