Updated

Updated · Business Insider · Aug 31

US Marshals Sell Seized Anthropic Shares Worth Up to $1.1 Billion From FTX Associates

Updated

Updated · Business Insider · Aug 31

US Marshals Sell Seized Anthropic Shares Worth Up to $1.1 Billion From FTX Associates

Q: Who were the mystery buyers that scooped up the forfeited Anthropic shares from the government before the company's trillion-dollar valuation?

The buyers have not been publicly identified. What is known from court records and reporting is only that the U.S. Marshals Service sold the forfeited Anthropic shares in 2025 to existing Anthropic shareholders. Neither the Justice Department nor the Marshals Service has disclosed the names of those investors, the exact timing of the sale, the price, or the total proceeds. Anthropic’s transfer restrictions likely narrowed the eligible pool to approved, existing investors or shareholders, which helps explain why the shares were not widely marketed. Reporting clearly distinguishes this mystery sale from the separate FTX bankruptcy sale of Sam Bankman-Fried’s own Anthropic stake. In that 2024 bankruptcy process, some buyers were identified in court filings, including an entity affiliated with Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala, along with Jane Street, HOF Capital, and Fidelity-managed funds. But those named buyers were tied to Bankman-Fried’s estate sale, not to the later government sale of Caroline Ellison’s and Nishad Singh’s forfeited personal shares. So the direct answer is that the “mystery buyers” remain unknown. The only verified public detail is that they were existing Anthropic shareholders approved to acquire the stock.

3 articles · Updated · Business Insider · Aug 31

$10 million and $40 million Anthropic stakes forfeited by Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh were sold by the US Marshals Service to existing Anthropic investors sometime in 2025, according to a person familiar with the deal.
Those shares were seized after a judge ordered them forfeited as crime proceeds in the FTX fraud case, but the sale price, buyers and timing remain undisclosed; estimates put their 2025 value at roughly $250 million to $1.1 billion.
The proceeds do not appear to have been transferred to the FTX estate by end-June 2026, leaving unresolved whether the Justice Department will route the money to victims through remission or retain some of it.
Anthropic's surge has magnified the stakes: the company said it was worth $965 billion in May, and the same Ellison-Singh shares could now be worth roughly $2.6 billion to more than $5 billion.

Sources

Left100%

Business Insider1h ago

US Marshals Sell Seized Anthropic Shares from Bankman-Fried Associates

Crypto Times1h ago

US Govt Sells FTX Executives' Anthropic Stakes Bought for $50M, Now Worth Up to $5B

startupfortune.com3h ago

Sam Bankman-Fried Circle's Anthropic Shares Sold Before Value Exploded - Startup Fortune

4 Sources

Who were the mystery buyers that scooped up the forfeited Anthropic shares from the government before the company's trillion-dollar valuation?

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FTX Victims Miss Out on $60+ Billion: How Bureaucratic Delays and Opaque Government Sales Cost Creditors Their Recovery

Overview

This report reveals how FTX victims are still waiting for compensation, despite the U.S. government seizing and selling Anthropic shares from former executives for up to $1.1 billion. The funds remain stuck because the Department of Justice manages victim payments through a slow, opaque remission process, with the Attorney General holding absolute discretion and the ability to deduct prosecution costs. Meanwhile, the FTX bankruptcy estate sold its own Anthropic stake early, missing out on tens of billions as the company’s value soared. As a result, victims receive only a fraction of their original purchasing power, highlighting the costly impact of bureaucratic delays and premature asset sales.

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