Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has abruptly halted the sale of one of its most sought-after assets: a stake in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.
Perella Weinberg Partners, the boutique investment bank that acts as an adviser to FTX, informed bidders this month about the pause, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing confidential information.
The halt came after several months during which multiple potential buyers assessed private information about the Anthropic stake, the people said. Semafor reported earlier in June that FTX had been shopping its Anthropic holding with an expectation of fetching “nine figures.”
Privately-held Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, has become one of the hottest companies of the current AI boom. Anthropic said in May that it had raised $450 million to support the development of its AI bot, dubbed Claude.
Buyers in the secondary market for shares in private companies have been actively seeking opportunities to acquire stakes in Anthropic, including at a premium, according to Rainmaker Securities co-founder Glen Anderson. According to Semafor’s June report, Anthropic is valued at $4.6 billion.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and Alameda made a $500 million investment in the startup, according to an internal document circulated before last November’s bankruptcy filing and reviewed by Bloomberg News.
The Anthropic stake represents one of the biggest bets made by the now-failed crypto exchange, behind its $1.5 billion investment in crypto miner Genesis Digital.
Perella had asked potential bidders to sign non-disclosure agreements, the people said. Requiring would-be bidders to sign NDAs before accessing private information about a target’s finances is a standard practice.
FTX declined to comment. Neither Perella nor Anthropic responded to requests for comment.
This week, the new management of FTX published a report detailing the alleged commingling and misuse of customer assets at the exchange. The report cited certain transactions, including political donations and VC investments, that appear to have been funded in part by commingled customer deposits.
--With assistance from Hannah Miller, Saritha Rai, Yiqin Shen and Nina Trentmann.
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.
