The feds seized $5 billion in Anthropic shares from Sam Bankman-Fried's friends
Federal agents seized billions in AI shares from fraudsters.
The short version
- The stock belonged to Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh.
- Those shares vanished into a quiet legal black hole.
- Victims of the $11 billion crime wait for cash.
Federal agents quietly seized between $2.62 billion and $5.03 billion in artificial intelligence shares from associates of the convicted crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried, according to Business Insider. The federal government acquired the equity without paying a penny after a judge ordered the forfeiture.
Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted in 2023 on fraud and money laundering charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison after his cryptocurrency empire collapsed. Prosecutors said he used his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, to siphon billions of dollars from customers of FTX, his crypto exchange.
Caroline Ellison ran Alameda Research, which traded funds that belonged to FTX depositors, while Nishad Singh served as an FTX executive. Both executives pleaded guilty as co-conspirators and testified against Sam Bankman-Fried. The federal government took ownership of Caroline Ellison's shares in February 2025 and Nishad Singh's in April of that year.
The feds then sold those seized shares to existing shareholders of Anthropic, an artificial intelligence safety and research company that builds Claude. Anthropic has grown into the most valuable private company in the world with a valuation soaring as high as $1.5 trillion.
Caroline Ellison initially invested $10 million in a 2022 funding round, and Nishad Singh invested $40 million. Those early bets are now worth a fortune on the secondary market. It remains unclear whether the government will pay out the proceeds to victims of the $11 billion fraud case or keep the money. Millions of potential victims await restitution while the feds sit on a mountain of AI cash.
