I had to share something I recently discovered about the most absurd story in the crypto market. Have you ever stopped to think about what happened with that $500 million investment in Anthropic? Let me tell you because it’s like a real series episode.

In April 2022, when no one was talking about generative AI yet, SBF invested $500 million in Anthropic’s Series B. It wasn’t his money — it was FTX’s customers’ money. Seven months later, FTX collapses, he goes to prison for 25 years. But here comes the plot twist: that AI investment he made with stolen funds? Today, it’s potentially worth $30 billion. That’s a 60x return. If it had been legitimate, it would be one of the biggest risk bets in history.

What no one talks about is that SBF didn’t find Anthropic by chance. He was part of a very specific circle called Effective Altruism — the folks who believe that the greatest existential risk to humanity is uncontrolled AI. Dario Amodei, founder of Anthropic, lived in a shared house with Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of GiveWell, and Paul Christiano, an AI alignment researcher. All connected by the same philosophy.

The three biggest funders of the EA movement — Dustin Moskovitz (Facebook), Jaan Tallinn (Skype), and SBF — all became early investors in Anthropic. It wasn’t a brilliant investment insight. It was capital circulating within the same network. EA money flowing into EA projects.

But Dario wasn’t naive. He saw enough red flags that he decided to give SBF non-voting shares and remove him from the board. After everything exploded, he said SBF’s behavior was “much more extreme and horrible than I imagined.” But still, they took the $500 million.

The outcome is like black comedy. When FTX went bankrupt, those shares were frozen. The liquidation team sold everything quickly in March 2024 for $1.34 billion — exactly the amount needed to compensate the victims. Had they held on? Now, in February 2026, Anthropic closed a $30 billion funding round with a valuation of $380 billion. That 8% SBF owned was worth $30 billion.

The difference between $1.34 billion and $30 billion is literally the biggest loss in FTX’s entire bankruptcy. SBF is now in federal prison, released in 2049 at age 57. In the meantime, the company where he invested stolen money became one of the most influential on the planet, consulting for the Pentagon, involved in decisions about AI militarization.

And here’s the most interesting part: Anthropic is now distancing itself completely from the EA label. Daniela Amodei said in an interview that she “does not identify” with Effective Altruism, calling it “an outdated term.” This after the company was literally founded on the core principles of the movement, funded by people from the EA network, with governance controlled by EA activists.

Makes sense, right? After SBF tarnished the reputation of the entire EA movement, any smart company would cut that tie. But the fact remains: the logic behind Anthropic comes directly from the arguments about existential AI risk that EA advocates. The initial funding almost entirely came from that network. The governance is controlled by people from the system.

It’s like two parallel universes. SBF believed in “earning to donate” — accumulating maximum money to do good later. Anthropic believes in “developing safe AI.” Both share the same underlying reasoning: to achieve a sufficiently large benefit, unusual methods and risks are acceptable. SBF pushed this into crime. Anthropic operates on the legal side of the line, but its core proposition — “we need to build the most powerful AI to ensure safety” — is an almost self-fulfilling bet.

They grow in the same soil. Dario and SBF attended the same events, shared the same philosophy, lived in different nodes of the same network. One is heading toward a $380 billion AI empire. The other is in federal prison. And that $500 million check that connected them? It remains the strangest page in Anthropic’s story.