Written by Dietrich Knaut
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. judge ruled on Thursday that bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX may sell its stake in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey in Wilmington, Delaware, approved FTX's proposed stock sale after the company reached a court settlement with a group of FTX customers that had opposed the sale.
According to court documents, FTX invested $500 million in Anthropic in 2021 and currently holds a 7.84% stake in the company. The company had sought permission to sell the shares as part of a court-supervised effort to liquidate assets and repay customers who lost access to their accounts during its 2022 bankruptcy.
“We're selling Anthropic stock just as if we were selling everything and putting that money in the bank,” FTX attorney Andy Dietderich said during a court hearing Thursday.
FTX expects to realize a profit from the sale of the shares and intends to maintain the flexibility to sell the shares at the “most optimal and appropriate time,” according to court documents.
“Given the growing interest in AI and large-scale language models, the value of Anthropic stock has increased significantly since the debtors’ acquisition and investment in Anthropic in 2021,” FTX said on February 3. said in a court filing.
FTX's 2021 investment initially acquired a 13.56% stake in Anthropic. FTX's shares were diluted by the company's subsequent financings, including a $4 billion investment from Amazon.com.
Customers who opposed the sale argued that the Anthropic shares were purchased with funds embezzled from FTX customers' deposits and that FTX did not actually own the Anthropic shares. However, the companies agreed Thursday to allow the sale to proceed as long as FTX customers can later claim that they own the funds resulting from a future sale.
Dietderich said FTX already intends to use the proceeds of the sale to repay customers and has enough cash to repay certain groups of customers that it can convince a court they own Anthropic stock. He said he had it. Dietderich said FTX currently has $6.4 billion in cash.
FTX plans to pay all customers in full, but the repayment amount will be based on cryptocurrency prices after November 2022, when FTX files for bankruptcy amid a prolonged crypto market downturn, rather than at the moment when crypto assets are highly valued. You will have to calculate.
FTX founder Sam Bankman Fried was found guilty on November 2 of stealing billions of dollars from customers in one of the largest financial frauds in history. Bankman Freed will be sentenced on March 28, and plans to appeal his conviction.
(Reporting by Dietrich Knaut; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvy and William MacLean)
