by Coinstrooper Crypto Articles
Quick Take
  • Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) led a $580 million funding round into Anthropic in April 2022.
  • Critics say the donor network he championed still amplifies the artificial intelligence (AI) safety message his money paid for.
  • Prosecutors forced a sale of his shares to repay creditors.
  • The effective altruism network he backed, which funds causes it judges most urgent, stayed in place.

What Happened

Months after the April 2022 round, FTX collapsed. He was convicted of defrauding investors of $3 billion and is serving 25 years.

Dustin Moskovitz, a Facebook co-founder, invested in Anthropic in 2021. He sits on the board of Coefficient Giving, the grantmaker formerly called Open Philanthropy.

The post Sam Bankman-Fried’s $500 Million Investment Still Haunts Anthropic appeared first on BeInCrypto.

Market Context

Amodei published a policy essay in June seeking mandatory third-party testing of frontier models. He did not address the capture argument.

Why It Matters

Longview Philanthropy, another effective altruism group, funds Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR), which grades frontier models on risk. Its head, Paul Christiano, once roomed with Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei.

Details

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) led a $580 million funding round into Anthropic in April 2022. Critics say the donor network he championed still amplifies the artificial intelligence (AI) safety message his money paid for.

The FTX founder holds no stake today. Prosecutors forced a sale of his shares to repay creditors. The effective altruism network he backed, which funds causes it judges most urgent, stayed in place.

Where Bankman-Fried’s Anthropic Money Went

Bankman-Fried put roughly $500 million into Anthropic in 2021 for about an 8% stake. Anthropic builds the Claude chatbot.

BeInCrypto reported in June that the estate sold that Anthropic stake for about $1.3 billion in 2024. It would be worth more than $30 billion at Anthropic’s latest $380 billion valuation.

Where the Network’s Money Goes Today

Coefficient is a major backer of the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, which pays more than 80 reporters at outlets including Time, Bloomberg, and The Guardian. It says they are independent.

Anthropic separately pays about 1,000 people trained on Claude to embed inside more than 400 nonprofits. It calls the program Claude Corps.

Critics Who Say Amodei Borrowed the Playbook

Brian Chau, a machine learning engineer, founded the AI news site Effort. He told the New York Post that Amodei now seeks safety rules that would also shield an established company.

“So it’s no surprise that he’s now copying literally the exact same tactics used by Sam Bankman-Fried in order to achieve regulatory monopoly.”

Chau said those programs were once named effective altruism as their purpose. The wording changed to AI safety after Bankman-Fried’s arrest in December 2022.

The Fight Amodei’s Push Landed In

Amodei’s remarks come as Washington moves the other way. Trump signed an order in December 2025 to preempt state AI laws and has called safety fears a hoax.

Some members of Congress say the burden of AI safety now rests on developers themselves.

Anthropic nearly tripled its federal lobbying spending to $3.53 million in the first half of 2026.