Business Insider reported on 27 October 2026 that the US government made $627 million selling Anthropic shares it had seized from Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh, two co-conspirators of Sam Bankman-Fried in the FTX fraud case. The sale price comes from Anthropic’s S-1, the registration statement for its IPO filed on 26 October 2026.
The S-1 does not name the former holders. It says that in October 2025 Anthropic “repurchased 4,453,900 shares of our Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock from the U.S. government, to which such shares had been forfeited by former holders in legal proceedings to which we were not a party.”
Short explainer · AI IPO brief
A vertical news Short narrated from the published headlines and opening lines of this piece and four related FourWeekMBA pieces on Anthropic’s IPO filing.
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer. It teaches a general business idea only and does not discuss Anthropic, its S-1 or the forfeited shares.
The key insight: As we read it, the filing shows the government sold the forfeited block at the price of Anthropic’s most recent round at the time, $140.9676 per share, and the S-1 shows a later round priced at $259.1364.
The filing says Anthropic bought the shares “at a purchase price of $140.9676 per share, and contemporaneously resold such shares to nine accredited investors at the same price per share, for aggregate consideration of approximately $627 million.”
“We did not receive any net proceeds from these transactions,” the S-1 says. It does not name the nine investors.
The $140.9676 price is the same price the S-1 gives for the Series F-1 shares Anthropic sold from August 2025 to September 2025. The filing says that from January 2026 to February 2026 it sold Series G-1 shares at $259.1364 per share.
At that Series G-1 price, the 4,453,900 shares would come to about $1.15 billion, by our arithmetic. That is a calculation for scale, not a price anyone paid for these shares.
What the 4,453,900 forfeited Series B shares were worth at three points: the $50 million Ellison and Singh put in during 2022 (Business Insider), the ~$627 million at which Anthropic bought them from the US government and resold them in October 2025 (S-1), and ~$1.15 billion at the S-1’s January-February 2026 Series G-1 price (our arithmetic, for scale only). Sources: Anthropic Form S-1, 26 Oct 2026; Business Insider, 27 Oct 2026.
How the Shares Reached the Government
What the 4,453,900 forfeited Series B shares fetched when the US government sold them to Anthropic, which resold them at the same price in October 2025 (about $627 million, per the S-1), against the $50 million Ellison and Singh put in during 2022 (Business Insider). The 12x is our arithmetic. Sources: Anthropic Form S-1, 26 Oct 2026; Business Insider, 27 Oct 2026.
Business Insider reported that the shares had belonged to Ellison and Singh, who together put $50 million into Anthropic’s 2022 Series B round alongside Bankman-Fried: Singh $40 million and Ellison $10 million, per the outlet. It reported that the share count in the S-1 matches their combined stake.
Both later pleaded guilty and testified against Bankman-Fried, Business Insider reported. It said the government took ownership of their Anthropic shares by April 2025 and that the US Marshals Service sold them.
A Justice Department spokesperson told Business Insider the proceeds went to compensate victims of the fraud. The outlet reported that bankruptcy court filings show the Justice Department transferred $638 million to the FTX bankruptcy estate in late 2025.
Bankman-Fried’s own $500 million of Series B shares took a different path, Business Insider reported: they went to the FTX bankruptcy estate, which sold them in 2024 to a few dozen buyers for a total of $1.3 billion.
What the Stake Could Be Worth Now
Business Insider calculated that at a $1.5 trillion valuation the shares would be worth about $3.94 billion, which it said would be six times what the government sold them for. That figure is the outlet’s arithmetic.
Anthropic has not announced a price for its IPO, the outlet noted.
“One of the Justice Department’s top priorities is returning forfeited funds to victims through the asset forfeiture program whenever the law allows,” the Justice Department spokesperson told Business Insider.
As we read it, Anthropic was a pass-through: the S-1 says it bought the shares from the U.S. government and “contemporaneously resold such shares to nine accredited investors at the same price per share,” and that it “did not receive any net proceeds from these transactions.”
As we read it, the timing set the price: the S-1 gives $140.9676 for the Series F-1 shares sold from August 2025 to September 2025, the same price as the October 2025 repurchase, and $259.1364 for the Series G-1 shares sold from January 2026 to February 2026.
Business Insider calculated about $3.94 billion at a $1.5 trillion valuation. Anthropic has not set an IPO price, the outlet noted, so that figure depends on a valuation that does not yet exist.
Anthropic’s Form S-1, 26 October 2026
“We did not receive any net proceeds from these transactions”
Three Implications
FOR FTX CREDITORS A Justice Department spokesperson told Business Insider the proceeds went to compensate victims of the fraud; the outlet reported a $638 million transfer to the FTX bankruptcy estate in late 2025.
FOR THE NINE BUYERS The S-1 says nine accredited investors bought the shares at $140.9676 each; it does not name them.
FOR IPO INVESTORS The S-1 discloses the repurchase among its recent sales of securities, alongside the Series F and Series G rounds.
The framework sets out to show “How the money flows, where it cracks, what it buys, who can absorb it” in the AI build-out.
The S-1 line traces one block of Anthropic equity through a forfeiture in legal proceedings to nine new investors at the price of Anthropic’s then-latest round. The framework does not discuss this filing.
What Is Not Established
The S-1 does not name the former holders, the nine buyers or the legal proceedings. The link to Ellison and Singh is Business Insider’s reporting, and we have not read the forfeiture orders or the bankruptcy filings it cites.
The $3.94 billion figure depends on a $1.5 trillion valuation that Anthropic has not set.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
Execution Fault Lines, Concentrated Demand, and Geopolitical Firewalls
This week’s issue: the AI build is not short of demand for its parts. It is short of cheap money, and its end revenue rests on a narrow base of large, often venture-funded buyers.
Anthropic’s S-1 says it bought 4,453,900 forfeited Series B shares from the US government in October 2025 and resold them at the same price, about $627 million in all; Business Insider reports those shares had belonged to two of Bankman-Fried’s co-conspirators.
A note on sourcing. The share count, prices and the $627 million total come from Anthropic’s Form S-1, filed 26 October 2026, quoted verbatim. The identity of the former holders, their 2022 stakes, the Justice Department comments, the $638 million transfer and the $3.94 billion calculation are Business Insider’s reporting. The ~$1.15 billion figure is our arithmetic at the S-1’s Series G-1 price. We have not read the forfeiture orders or bankruptcy filings.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
