Feds sold Ellison and Singh's Anthropic shares to insiders

The federal government seized the Anthropic stock owned by Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh and sold it back to the company's existing shareholders, a stake PitchBook analyst Harrison Rolfes values at $2.62 billion today. The sale took place last year, Business Insider reports, citing a person familiar with it.

At a glance

• Ellison put $10 million and Singh $40 million into Anthropic's 2022 Series B round, and a judge ordered both to forfeit the stock as proceeds of the FTX fraud.
• Olav Sorenson, who teaches venture capital strategy at UCLA, values the two stakes together at $4.17 billion to $5.03 billion against the $965 billion valuation Anthropic announced in May; PitchBook's Rolfes says $2.62 billion.
• No revenue from the sale had reached the FTX bankruptcy estate as of the end of June, per the estate's filings, and the Justice Department says information about asset sales and victim compensation is confidential.

The forfeiture left an unusual holding inside the federal asset pipeline: illiquid stock in one of the fastest-appreciating companies in recent business history, resold with no public record of price or buyer. It also sharpens a complaint that has followed the FTX bankruptcy from the start, that claims were fixed at 2022 valuations while the underlying assets kept compounding. If Anthropic reaches a public listing, the gap between what the government collected and what the stake is now worth will likely widen further.

Bankman-Fried's $500 million bought 13.56% of Anthropic in 2022

Bankman-Fried, Singh and Ellison each invested in Anthropic's 2022 Series B round. Court records reviewed by Business Insider show Bankman-Fried bought $500 million worth, equal to 13.56% of the company at the time, while Singh acquired $40 million in shares and Ellison $10 million.

Bankman-Fried's own stake, held through the Alameda Research affiliate Clifton Bay, went into the FTX bankruptcy. The estate sold it in 2024 to a few dozen buyers for $1.3 billion, more than double what he paid, with the largest block going to an entity affiliated with the United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund. By January 2024, dilution from later rounds had cut that position to 7.84% of Anthropic, the estate told the bankruptcy court.

Anthropic has been valued at $1.5 trillion on the secondary market, the most valuable private company in the world according to Crunchbase. Rolfes said that at a $2 trillion public listing the two forfeited stakes would be worth about $5.44 billion.

A federal judge sent the forfeited shares to the government in February and April 2025

As part of their sentences, a judge required Singh and Ellison to forfeit their Anthropic shares, which prosecutors said could be considered proceeds of their crimes. Court records show the government took ownership of Ellison's shares in February 2025 and Singh's that April.

Because prosecutors said the number of potential FTX victims could run into the millions, the judge ruled that compensation would go through remission, a process run by the Justice Department rather than the courts. At Ellison's sentencing, prosecutors said the department would either build its own claims process or work with the FTX bankruptcy estate to identify victims.

Singh's attorney Andrew Goldstein said at sentencing that his client bought the shares before joining the conspiracy and "actually may have had a legitimate legal claim" to them, but surrendered them under his plea agreement. Goldstein told Business Insider that Singh hopes the government distributes the proceeds to FTX victims quickly.

Anthropic went from $61.5 billion to $380 billion between its Series E and Series G rounds

Seized private-company shares normally go to the US Marshals Service Complex Assets Unit for liquidation. The unit tries to value them as any investor would, said securities litigation attorney Michael Bachner, weighing what an institutional buyer would pay and whether a secondary market exists.

The unit is supposed to preserve as much value as possible, Bachner said. Anthropic was worth $61.5 billion in its March 2025 Series E round and $380 billion by its Series G round at the start of 2026. Depending on when the sale closed, the stake could have been worth $250 million to $630 million by Rolfes's estimate, or $300 million to $1.1 billion by Sorenson's.

It is not clear which investors bought the shares or how much the government made. Duncan Levin, who teaches forfeiture at Harvard Law School, called it "a very opaque process" that is "completely at the discretion, by law, of the attorney general of the United States."

Whether FTX victims see the money

The FTX estate received $638 million from Justice Department seizures last year, nearly all of it from Bankman-Fried's Robinhood shares, and its annual report says it expects about $400 million more, including proceeds from cryptocurrency and other investments. The estate continues to compensate victims and creditors.

FTX victim Sunil Kavuri, who says depositors were never made whole because losses were fixed at the bankruptcy petition date, called it "diabolical" for the government to keep the proceeds. Bachner said the outcome is "really a unilateral government decision."