Jailed crypto kingpin SBF invested $500m in AI startup Anthropic. It would now be worth $15 billion

If you can cast your mind back to 2021 and the world's last great tech-driven bubble, you may remember one unassuming nerd who took centre stage. 

Sam Bankman-Fried, the brains behind cryptocurrency exchange FTX and enfant terrible of the Covid-fuelled crypto bubble, became an overnight sensation. 

Back then, between holding fireside chats with Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, spending millions of dollars on Superbowl ads featuring Larry David and US$135 million on sponsoring Miami Heat's basketball stadium, SBF took a punt on a then-little known AI startup called Anthropic.

Anthropic, the company behind the popular Claude LLM, was founded by ex-Open AI employees Daniela Amodei and Dario Amodei.

In April 2022, SBF invested US$500 million (of what later turned out to be his own customer's money - the reason he's now serving a 25-year jail sentence for fraud and money laundering) for an 8% stake in Anthropic. 

But after the collapse of FTX, SBF's many investments were seized as part of a multi-billion dollar bankruptcy case.

As part of this, FTX's stake in Anthropic was sold off to a number of buyers in early 2024 for around US$1.4 billion. 

Based on a recent funding round, Anthropic is now valued at US$183 billion.

This means SBF's US$500 million stake would have been worth almost US$15 billion.

If that doesn't scream bubble, I don't know what will.

Here we have the chief instigator of the last tech-driven, Silicon Valley-led market bubble as an early investor in the next one.

The parallels are obvious. 

Crazy valuations, unproven tech, cultist devotion and a huge case of FOMO.

Of course, there's a clear argument that AI and LLMs will provide much greater utility than crypto, NFTs and Web 3.0 ever did.

That doesn't mean we're not in a bubble.

After all, the Dot-com bubble was built around a technology that has arguably done more to revolutionise society than anything since the Industrial Revolution. 

As I've written previously, AI companies are burning cash and have no obvious path to profitability. 

And that's with Anthropic and rival Open AI effectively having a duopoly on direct LLM-driven revenue through their Claude and ChatGPT models. 

Much of the strength shown in the stock market in 2025 has come from the big end of town, with the Mag 7 betting big on AI and investors coming along for the ride. 

Meanwhile, privately-owned AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI continue to see their valuations skyrocket. OpenAI is now valued at US$500 billion, likely making it one of the 20 most valuable companies in the world. 

It's left the burgeoning industry in a precarious position as pressure grows on those at the centre of the AI revolution to deliver tangible rewards. 

All we've got for now is inflated valuations and big sunk costs. Historically, that hasn't been a recipe for success. Just ask SBF.

UBS's proprietary HOLT Economic model suggests US tech stocks are now trading at an aggregate P/E of more than 35x.

That is on par with the Dot-com era. Not a good place to be.