A federal bankruptcy court has approved a plan by bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its creditors to sell a $1 billion stake in Claude AI developer Anthropic. The filing, filed in Delaware Bankruptcy Court and approved Thursday, is just the latest move to rejuvenate creditors following FTX’s industry-shaking levy in 2022.
The sale of Anthropic stock was approved by U.S. Federal Judge John Dorsey, who issued the order yesterday after filing it with the court last week.
Last June, FTX expressed interest in selling Anthropic stock through financial services firm Perella Weinberg Partners in an attempt to “recapture” funds to pay off outstanding debt. Last October, the path became clearer when the U.S. Department of Justice said FTX’s investment in Anthropic was not related to the case against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
Recovery refers to the legal process by which a bankruptcy trustee recovers property or payments made by a company before filing for bankruptcy. Clawbacks may also take the form of selling assets (in this case, Anthropic stock).
Before launching a bid to sell its stake in Anthropic, FTX sold derivatives trading platform Ledger
This week’s green light comes after FTX’s planned sale of Anthropic stock was halted in June, just weeks after it was made public. A factor in the pause may have been the Claude 2 AI model that Anthropic released in July.
At the time of Claude 2’s launch, FTX’s Anthropic stock was worth approximately $500 million. Since then, the value of Anthropic stock has doubled to $1 billion.
Last September, FTX was authorized to sell $3.4 billion in Solana, Ethereum, Bitcoin and other assets. At the time, the amount of tokens the company could sell was limited to $100 million per week.
Court documents show that FTX holds $1.16 billion in SOL, $560 million in BTC, $192 million in ETH, and $137 million in APT.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
