FTX asked the court for permission to quickly sell 8% of Anthropic shares

FTX asked the court to quickly approve its proposal to sell nearly 8% of its shares in AI company Anthropic, which could raise more than 1 billion USD.

FTX asked the court for permission to quickly sell 8% of Anthropic shares. Photo: WSJ

FTX, cryptocurrency exchangewent bankrupt in November 2022, is looking to liquidate its most significant remaining illiquid asset, which is 8% of the shares of AI startup Anthropic.FTX once invested in this AI projectand areholds a huge amount of shares up to 500 million USD.

Besides asking the judge to approve the sale of FTX's shares in Anthropic, FTX - currently run by a new CEOJhohn Ray III- also submitted another motion, to shorten the review time right at the next court hearing on February 22. The deadline for the court to issue an objection is February 15. 

FTX owns exactly 7.84% of shares in Anthropic, proposed to be sold in the form of auction or private sale. Arguing about this, FTX's lawyers said they did not want to make the price public so that they could gain the most profit for the debtor.

Anthropic is an artificial intelligence company founded by former OpenAI employees and is considered a formidable competitor to the organization behind ChatGPT. This startup has attracted investment capital from many technology companies such as Google, Amazon, Zoom... 

The latest valuation (December 2023) of Anthropic is up to 18 billion USD. This means that FTX's shares are worth about 1.4 billion USD. This is also considered "the light at the end of the tunnel" for the victims The scandal collapsed and shocked the world for a while. Recently, in the statement "let go"intention to revive, FTX also commits to fully repaying money to customers and creditors.

In fact, in recent times, FTXIncrease crypto sales, accumulate more cashas well as supposedsold 1 billion USD of GBTC shares, serveUser compensation plan.