Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Dubai tycoon Hussain Sajwani, founder of DAMAC Group, expects his investments in artificial intelligence firms including Anthropic to draw billions in returns. “Between only three companies, OpenAI and SpaceX and Anthropic, we’re making few billion dollars of profit”, Sajwani said at the Bloomberg Invest Dubai event.
The court record shows what the Anthropic part cost. Manius Invest Co Ltd, listed as Damac Capital, agreed to buy 1,666,416 Anthropic Series B shares from the FTX bankruptcy estate for $49,999,979, according to the estate’s sale notice of 31 May 2024. At $74, the midpoint of the $70.00 to $78.00 range in Anthropic’s S-1/A of 10 November, those shares would be worth about $1.23 billion, by our arithmetic: about 24.7 times the price paid.
Business Pill · IPO Float
A short explainer on IPO float, the share of a company sold in its listing. It teaches the general idea and does not discuss DAMAC or its shares.
The key insight: As we read it, the bankruptcy docket puts a price on one line of Hussain Sajwani’s AI bet: Damac Capital’s 1,666,416 Anthropic Series B shares, bought from the FTX estate for $49,999,979 in 2024, would be worth about $1.23 billion at the $74 midpoint of the IPO range, by our arithmetic, about 24.7 times the price paid.
DAMAC Group’s release of 8 July 2024 announced “a $50 million in the AI startup, Anthropic”, bought as one of the investors “who have bought into the company from the cryptocurrency exchange, FTX”. The same release named investments in xAI and Mistral and described the group as “the multi-billion-dollar business conglomerate of UAE based Hussain Sajwani”.
The estate’s notice of 31 May 2024 lists 21 purchasers of 15,073,349 shares for $452,268,300. Damac Capital’s line, 1,666,416 shares, ties with a Quickscope Investments fund for the third-largest purchase, behind G Squared VI Holdco with 4,499,325 shares and Forge’s Fund FG-BLU with 2,266,141. The purchase schedule prices it at $30.0045 a share. A declaration filed with the notice names Damac Capital Ltd. as the parent of the buyer, a British Virgin Islands company.
The shares came from the block FTX’s affiliate Clifton Bay bought for $500,000,000 in 2021 and converted into 44,539,240 Series B shares at $11.2261 in May 2022, according to the estate’s motion. The estate sold all of it in two 2024 sales for $1,336,377,627, as covered in our piece on the FTX stake.
Damac Capital’s 1,666,416 Anthropic Series B shares, bought from the FTX bankruptcy estate for $49,999,979 in its May 2024 sale, and their value at the $70, $74 and $78 marks of the S-1/A range of 10 November 2026. Values are our arithmetic, assuming 10 Class N shares per Series B share after the 10-for-1 split adjustment, gross of taxes and lock-ups.The five largest purchasers in the FTX estate’s May 2024 sale of Anthropic Series B shares, from the notice of 31 May 2024: G Squared VI Holdco ($135.0 million), Forge’s Fund FG-BLU ($68.0 million), Damac Capital and a Quickscope Investments fund ($50.0 million each) and Collab LTSE’s Constitutional AI Fund ($32.0 million), against their value at the $74 IPO midpoint, our arithmetic at 10 Class N shares per Series B share. Gross; the IPO is not priced.
Our Numbers
Anthropic’s S-1/A says it effected a 10-for-1 split of its Class A and Class N common stock on 17 September 2026 and that the conversion rate of its preferred stock “was proportionately adjusted to factor in the stock split”. On that basis, by our arithmetic, Damac Capital’s 1,666,416 Series B shares become 16,664,160 Class N shares.
At the range, by our arithmetic, those shares are worth $1.17 billion at $70, $1.23 billion at $74 and $1.30 billion at $78. That is 23.3 to 26.0 times the $49,999,979 paid. At the midpoint the paper gain is about $1.18 billion, before taxes and lock-ups.
The purchase was about 3.7% of the estate’s 44,539,240 shares and about 11.1% of the May 2024 sale, by our arithmetic. The converted shares equal about 0.14% of the 11.93 billion Class A and Class N shares the S-1/A counts before the offering.
Set against Sajwani’s remark, the Anthropic purchase alone would account for about $1.18 billion of paper gain at the midpoint, by our arithmetic. His “few billion dollars” covers three companies, and the part of Bloomberg’s report we could read gives no split by company.
The Structural Read
As we read the records, DAMAC paid the same $30.00 a share as every other buyer in the estate’s two 2024 sales, so its multiple at any IPO price is the same as theirs; what set its line apart was size, tied for third in the May sale.
As we read the numbers, the Anthropic shares can explain about $1.18 billion of the “few billion dollars” Sajwani described across three companies, by our arithmetic; the readable part of Bloomberg’s report does not say how the rest splits between OpenAI and SpaceX.
Hussain Sajwani, DAMAC Group release, 8 July 2024
“Our investments in companies like Mistral, Anthropic, and xAI underscore our dedication to fostering innovation and driving the next wave of technological advancements”
Three Implications
FOR DAMAC Each $1 move in the IPO price changes the value of the 16,664,160 converted shares by about $16.7 million, by our arithmetic.
FOR THE MAY 2024 BUYERS The sale notice priced the purchases at about $30.00 a share, so each buyer’s paper multiple at the $74 midpoint is about 24.7 times, by our arithmetic.
FOR THE CAP TABLE The S-1/A lists Series B among the preferred series that convert into Class N common stock immediately prior to the completion of the offering.
The framework records: “the capex race is no longer a corporate spending cycle. It is a sovereign-scale financing problem dressed in tech-company clothing”.
As we read it, DAMAC is one Gulf channel into that financing: its 2024 release describes a Dubai conglomerate whose family office had invested in over 70 funds and then bought into Anthropic, xAI and Mistral. The framework predates the filings and does not discuss DAMAC.
What Is Not Established
The IPO is not priced; the S-1/A gives an estimated range of $70.00 to $78.00, and our values move with it. The filing’s split note does not give a per-series conversion ratio, so the 10-for-1 conversion for Series B is our reading of it. Our values are gross of taxes and lock-ups.
The documents we read cover this one purchase. They do not show whether DAMAC bought or sold other Anthropic shares after May 2024, or how it holds its OpenAI and SpaceX positions. We read only the opening of Bloomberg’s report. The timetable for pricing and first trading is in our IPO day-by-day piece, and the wider picture in Anthropic’s IPO map.
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Hussain Sajwani told a Bloomberg event that OpenAI, SpaceX and Anthropic are making DAMAC a few billion dollars. The court record prices the Anthropic piece: 1,666,416 Series B shares bought from the FTX estate for $49,999,979 in 2024, worth about $1.23 billion at the $74 IPO midpoint, by our arithmetic.
A note on sourcing. We read the opening of Bloomberg’s report of 12 November 2026, DAMAC Group’s release of 8 July 2024, the FTX Debtors’ motion of 3 February 2024 and their sale notice of 31 May 2024 with its purchaser list, purchase schedule and purchaser declaration, on the Kroll case docket, and Anthropic’s S-1/A filed with the SEC on 10 November 2026. Share conversions, values, multiples and percentages are our arithmetic. Neither DAMAC nor Anthropic was contacted for this piece.
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.
