Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

Anthropic is now the most important AI company on this planet, perhaps without exception.

Its Claude large model is deployed at the Pentagon, U.S. intelligence agencies, and national laboratories, used by the U.S. military for intelligence analysis and target selection for military strikes against Iran.

Its annual revenue has skyrocketed from zero to $14 billion in less than three years. In February 2026, Anthropic completed a $30 billion Series G funding round, with a post-money valuation exceeding $380 billion. Amazon, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, tech giants are lining up to invest money.

In the past few weeks, it has been engaged in a globally watched game with the Pentagon over the issue of AI weaponization.

In the early funding history of this company, one name is still spoken of with relish: Sam Bankman-Fried.

In April 2022, before ChatGPT existed, the AI race was far from the heat it experiences today. SBF, through his controlled hedge fund Alameda Research, poured $500 million into Anthropic's Series B, taking 86% of the round and acquiring about 8% equity. Seven months later, the FTX empire collapsed, and SBF became the main character in the largest fraud case in cryptocurrency history, sentenced to 25 years in prison; that $500 million was the deposits of FTX customers.

But if SBF had not been arrested, if that money had a legal source, according to today's $380 billion valuation, the 8% equity would theoretically be worth over $30 billion. Turning $500 million into $30 billion, a return greater than 60 times, would rank as one of the most significant absolute profits in the entire venture capital history.

A cryptocurrency fraudster serving time in federal prison almost completed the most insane bet in AI investment history.

What allowed SBF to find Anthropic back in 2022? How did he dare to throw down $500 million? Why did Anthropic accept the money?

The answer lies within a circle known as "effective altruism."

A Shared Apartment, A Movement, A Check

In mid-2010s San Francisco, a group of people lived in the same type of shared apartments, attended the same types of parties, read the same types of papers, and adhered to the same philosophy.

This philosophy is called effective altruism (EA). The core proposition is simple: charity should not be based on feelings, but on calculations. Every dollar should flow towards directions that mathematically "maximize good outcomes," and within an important branch of EA, the biggest existential risk facing humanity is not nuclear war, not plague, but uncontrolled artificial intelligence.

Dario Amodei was immersed in this circle.

He was the 43rd signatory of the Giving What We Can Pledge, promising to donate at least 10% of his income, and he had been a fan of GiveWell since 2007 or 2008.

He lived in the same shared apartment with two others: one named Holden Karnofsky, a co-founder of GiveWell and Open Philanthropy, one of the most influential fund allocators in the EA movement; the other named Paul Christiano, a core researcher in AI alignment. At that time, Dario and Paul both served as technical advisors for Open Philanthropy.

Later, Karnofsky married Dario's sister Daniela. After their engagement, the couple briefly lived with Dario. In January 2025, Karnofsky quietly joined Anthropic as a "technical staff" responsible for safety strategy. When a Fortune reporter discovered this, Anthropic had not even publicly announced the appointment.

This is an intimate social network.

Amanda Askell, an early employee at Anthropic, is the ex-wife of William MacAskill, one of the initiators of the EA movement. She is the 67th signatory of GWWC, and her doctoral thesis dealt with core issues in EA philosophy, such as how to handle infinity in ethics.

The most important governance body of Anthropic, the "Long-Term Benefit Trust," theoretically holds significant control over the company, with three of its four members directly from the EA system: former GiveWell Executive Director Neil Buddy Shah, EA Center CEO Zach Robinson, and CEO of Evidence Action, a long-term grantee of GiveWell, Kanika Bahl.

The three biggest benefactors in the history of the EA movement are all early investors in Anthropic: Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, and Sam Bankman-Fried.

This is the real path through which SBF found Anthropic, not some genius investment insight or foresight into the AI race, but rather a flow of funds within an insider circle: EA money flows to EA projects addressing problems defined by EA.

SBF adheres to a more radical branch of EA, "earning to give." He left Wall Street quantitative firm Jane Street to dive into cryptocurrency, publicly stating that his goal was not personal wealth, but "altruism," to first make as much money as possible and then invest it in directions that would yield the greatest positive impact. The mission of Anthropic, "to safely develop powerful AI," is almost the standard prescription for EA regarding AI existential risks.

In May 2021, Jaan Tallinn led the Series A for Anthropic, investing $124 million, with Moskovitz participating as well. In April 2022, SBF took over and led the Series B, writing a check for $500 million, accounting for 86% of the total funding of $580 million. Co-investors for that round included Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh, and Jane Street's James McClave.

This co-investor list itself is telling. Caroline Ellison is the CEO of Alameda, Nishad Singh is the director of engineering at FTX, and Jane Street is SBF's former employer.

The $580 million Series B almost entirely came from SBF and the funds controlled around him.

Red Flags and Compromises

Dario Amodei is not foolish.

Later, in a deep interview, he recalled that SBF at that time seemed to be someone "optimistic about AI and concerned about safety," which aligned well with Anthropic's direction, but immediately after, Dario said a key phrase: he noticed "enough red flags."

So he made a decision: take the money but isolate it in governance structure. SBF received non-voting shares and was excluded from the board. Dario later assessed SBF's behavior as "much more extreme and malicious than I had imagined," with "much more" emphasized three times.

This decision would later prove very wise. But it also left a sharp question: if there were enough warning signs to necessitate isolation in governance structure, why still take the money?

You could argue that the AI funding environment in early 2022 was far less heated than it is today; Anthropic needed substantial funds to build computing power, and an investor willing to throw down $500 million, no matter how many "red flags" they had, was hard to come by.

But there's an even more subtle reason: in the operational logic of the EA circle, the "cleanliness" of the funding source has never been a primary consideration. What's important is the "effectiveness" of the funds, whether it can help you do more. SBF's entire wealth narrative was built on this foundation: making money is a means, doing good is the goal, so the means of making money can be less scrupulous as long as the final output of "good" is large enough.

This logic in SBF's hands crossed into the extreme of criminality, but at the moment he invested in Anthropic, it still looked like a radical yet legal philosophical choice.

After the Collapse: A Dark Comedy

The subsequent story is known to those in the crypto circle.

In November 2022, CoinDesk exposed Alameda's balance sheet, Zhao Changpeng announced the sale of FTT, and a run on FTX ensued, leading to a collapse of the empire within nine days. SBF was arrested, extradited, and tried, and in March 2024 was sentenced to 25 years. The 8% equity in Anthropic, along with all assets, was frozen in bankruptcy liquidation proceedings.

There is an episode excluded from the trial worth mentioning.

SBF's defense attorney attempted to present the Anthropic investment as evidence of "foresight," saying, "Look, he's not just wasting, he made an investment decision that multiplied the valuation several times."

Prosecutor Damian Williams' response was tough: whether these investments were profitable was entirely irrelevant to the fraud allegations. You stole money from others to invest; earning from it is still stealing. The judge accepted the prosecution's view, and Anthropic's name was excluded from the trial.

The prosecution added an extra jab: isn't FTX itself the best negative example? Valued at $18 billion in 2021, $32 billion in 2022, now worth nothing.

Then came the liquidation auction.

In March 2024, the first round was valued at $884 million.

The biggest buyer, the Abu Dhabi sovereign fund Mubadala, invested $500 million, exactly equal to the sum SBF invested back then. The second-largest buyer was Jane Street, SBF and Caroline Ellison's former employer; Jane Street's head of quantitative research Craig Falls even personally dug into his pockets for $20 million to participate. SBF's first job after graduating from MIT was as a trader at Jane Street, and now this old employer is spending money to buy back shares acquired with stolen funds by a former employee.

The two rounds combined recovered $1.34 billion. This money flowed into FTX's creditors' compensation pool, becoming an important source of funds for victims to recover their deposits.

What if the liquidation team hadn’t sold?

In February 2026, Anthropic completed a $30 billion Series G financing round, reaching a post-money valuation of $380 billion. If we exclude dilution, that 8% would theoretically change from $1.34 billion to $30 billion. Of course, the liquidation team did not have that choice; their responsibility was to quickly liquidate to repay creditors, but the difference in these numbers, $1.34 billion vs the potential over $30 billion, is key to understanding why this story is still being discussed today.

It is the biggest regret in the entire FTX bankruptcy case.

EA's Collective Amnesia

The scale and influence of Anthropic today need no elaboration, but an interesting phenomenon is that this company is systematically distancing itself from the EA movement.

All seven of its co-founders have pledged to donate 80% of their personal wealth, which, based on current valuations, means that just these seven founders' donation commitments amount to about $38 billion. Nearly 30 Anthropic employees signed up to attend the EA conference in San Francisco, more than double the total from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, xAI, and Meta superintelligent labs combined.

But Daniela Amodei, in an interview with Wired, said: "I am not an expert in effective altruism. I don't identify with that term. My impression is that it's a bit of an outdated way of saying it." The person saying this has a husband who is one of the most influential fund allocators in the EA movement and has just joined her company.

This posture of "taking EA's money, using EA's people, living in EA's shared apartment, but not admitting to being EA" has become understandable after the SBF case. The collapse of FTX has plunged the reputation of the EA movement to rock bottom. Anthropic needs to keep its distance from this label, just as any smart company would cut ties when its brand develops negative associations.

But the facts are clear: the founding logic of Anthropic springs from the core narrative of existential risk posed by AI in the EA circle; its early funding almost entirely comes from funds within the EA network; its governance structure is dominated by personnel from the EA system.

A Parallel Universe in Prison

Sam Bankman-Fried is now in federal prison. He is eligible for release in 2049. By then he will be 57 years old.

During this time in prison, the AI company he invested in with stolen funds has seen its valuation exceed $380 billion and is engaged in a globally watched game with the Pentagon over AI weaponization issues; its founders have become frequent guests on The New York Times and Capitol Hill. If everything were legal, that $500 million bet would have been enough to make SBF one of the highest-yielding venture capitalists of this era.

SBF's "earning to give" and Anthropic's "safely developing AI" share the same underlying operating system, which, for a sufficiently large good outcome, can accommodate unusual means and risks.

SBF pushed this logic beyond the boundaries of legality, while Anthropic operates on the safe side of that line, but its core proposition—"we must build the most powerful AI ourselves to ensure its safety"—is itself a gamble grand enough to be almost self-evident.

They grow in the same soil.

In that soil, Dario and SBF once attended the same parties, adhered to the same philosophy, lived at different nodes of the same social network. One headed towards a $380 billion valuation AI empire, the other walked into federal prison.

And the $500 million check connecting them remains the most bizarre page in Anthropic's history.

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