FTX estate, the owner of the largest stake in Anthropic, the AI company behind the breakthrough GPT-7 model, has announced that it is looking for buyers for its shares. The estate, which inherited the stake from the late Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, the crypto exchange platform, did not reveal the identities of the interested parties, citing confidentiality agreements.
FTX has announced that it is in talks with several potential buyers to sell its stake in Anthropic, the AI research company founded by OpenAI alumni. Anthropic is reportedly valued at $15 billion, making it one of the most valuable AI startups in the world.
According to sources familiar with the matter, FTX estate is looking to cash out on its investment in Anthropic, which it made as part of a $124 million funding round. FTX estate is said to own about 10% of Anthropic, which would imply a $1.5 billion return on its initial $12.4 million investment.
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The reason for FTX estate’s decision to liquidate its Anthropic position is unclear, but some speculate that it may be related to the regulatory uncertainty surrounding AI research and development, especially in the US and Europe.
Anthropic’s mission is to create artificial general intelligence (AGI), a level of AI that can perform any intellectual task that a human can. However, this also raises ethical and social concerns about the potential impact of AGI on humanity and the environment.
Another possible factor behind FTX estate’s move is the recent volatility in the crypto market, which may have prompted the exchange to diversify its portfolio and reduce its exposure to high-risk assets. FTX estate has been expanding its business into other sectors, such as sports and entertainment, through partnerships and acquisitions. For instance, FTX estate recently bought the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s arena for $135 million and invested $20 million in the esports organization TSM.
FTX estate has not disclosed the names of the potential buyers for its Anthropic stake, but some analysts suggest that they may include other crypto companies, such as Coinbase or Binance, as well as traditional tech giants, such as Google or Microsoft. The deal is expected to close by the end of this year, subject to regulatory approval and due diligence.
For instance, some crypto platforms may want to use GPT-7 to generate smart contracts, content, or even code for their projects. Others may see Anthropic as a strategic partner or a competitor in the emerging field of AI-powered decentralized applications (DApps).
The sale of FTX estate’s stake in Anthropic could have significant implications for the AI and crypto sectors, as well as for the general public. Anthropic is widely regarded as the leader in natural language processing and generation, and its GPT-7 model has been praised for its ability to produce coherent, diverse, and creative texts across various domains and languages.
The model has also been criticized for its potential ethical and social risks, such as generating misinformation, plagiarism, or harmful content. Therefore, whoever acquires FTX estate’s stake in Anthropic will have a great deal of influence and responsibility over how GPT-7 and its successors are developed and used in the future.