The feds made $627 million selling Anthropic stock from SBF's friends — but could have made billions

Federal sale of seized shares

Last year, the federal government made a windfall of $627 million when it sold Anthropic shares it had seized from associates of crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried. If it had held on to that stake, its windfall could have been a lot bigger. Business Insider previously reported that the federal government last year sold shares of Anthropic that had belonged to Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh, two executives at Bankman-Fried's now-defunct companies. Anthropic's S-1 filing on Monday revealed how much the federal government made from the sale of their shares. The prospectus doesn't name Ellison and Singh specifically.

It says the government in October 2025 sold 4,453,900 Series B shares of Anthropic that “had been forfeited by former holders in legal proceedings to which we were not a party.” The figure matches up exactly with the combined $50 million in shares that Singh and Ellison purchased for $11.2261 each in Anthropic's 2022 fundraising round, and later forfeited to the government. The shares represent about a quarter of a percent of Anthropic today. But given the company's explosive growth, they are still worth a fortune. Anthropic hasn't yet announced the stock price for its expected November initial public offering. At a $1.5 trillion valuation, the shares would be worth a total of about $3.94 billion. That would be six times as much as the government sold the shares for a year ago.

Criminal forfeiture and corporate repurchase

How the federal government came to own a chunk of Anthropic in the first place is a story involving a notorious fraudster and a complicated criminal forfeiture process. Bankman-Fried participated in Anthropic's 2022 Series B fundraising round with Singh and Ellison. Singh purchased $40 million of the Series B shares, and Ellison acquired $10 million. Singh and Ellison later pleaded guilty to crimes related to their work with Bankman-Fried and testified against him at his Manhattan federal criminal trial. The jury found Bankman-Fried guilty, and a judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison. The federal government took ownership of Singh's and Ellison's Anthropic shares by April 2025.

The US Marshals Service sold Singh's and Ellison's shares, rather than hold on to the red-hot Anthropic stock, Business Insider previously reported. The US Marshals Service Complex Assets Unit is typically tasked with dispensing shares of private companies acquired through criminal forfeiture. Now we know that Anthropic purchased the stock from the feds in October 2025 at the price of $140.9676 per share, which is the same price Anthropic set for its Series F-1 stock in a fundraising round a month earlier. Anthropic resold the shares to nine investors at the same $627 million total price it paid to purchase them from the federal government, so it didn't make a profit from the sale, according to the S-1 filing. It's not clear which nine investors purchased the shares originally owned by Singh and Ellison.

Comparison with FTX bankruptcy assets

The Anthropic shares owned by Ellison and Singh took a different path than the $500 million in Series B shares owned by Bankman-Fried himself. His shares ended up as part of FTX's bankruptcy estate, which sold them in 2024 to a few dozen buyers for a total of $1.3 billion. The proceeds went to repaying creditors, including FTX customers and investors who had been scammed by the former crypto wunderkind. Justice Department prosecutors told a federal judge that the DOJ would either set up its own claims administration process to compensate victims, or work with the FTX bankruptcy process to identify victims and provide forfeited funds to them.

The government hasn't announced a victims compensation fund. As of June, it had not transferred the $627 million to the FTX estate, bankruptcy court filings show. The government could also elect to keep the money, experts say. The DOJ and US Marshals Service didn't immediately comment for this story.