Anthropic, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup company, received about $500 million in funding from Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, roughly six months before FTX tragically failed. According to reports, Google Cloud has invested $300 million in Anthropic.
Financial Times published the $300 million amount on February 4, however, Anthropic acknowledged the investment collaboration with Google Cloud the same day without providing any numbers:
We're excited to use Google Cloud to train our AI systems, including Claude! https://t.co/IaqQ5lpJrP https://t.co/vOn5Cj4sPt
— Anthropic (@AnthropicAI) February 3, 2023
In the same statement, Anthropic also affirmed that their Series B financing round included contributions from Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, a former CEO of Alameda Research, among others:
The Series B round was led by Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX. The round also included participation from Caroline Ellison, Jim McClave, Nishad Singh, Jaan Tallinn, and the Center for Emerging Risk Research (CERR).”
According to Crunchbase, Bankman-fundraising Fried’s activities took place in April 2022.
According to a recent article by The New York Times, out of the $580 million collected, around $530 million was contributed by Bankman-Fried and his former business partners. However, other people think the number might be more significant.
Bankman-ownership Fried’s share in the AI business, according to one FTX creditor, may be worth up to $1.1 billion. But the creditor gave no further explanation of the sum.
Other members of the Crypto Twitter community are also speculating whether Bankman-investment Fried’s will be utilized to settle the enormous debt FTX has accrued as a result of their previous scandals. In terms of the collaboration, Anthropic will now use the GPU and TPU clusters on Google Cloud to train, extend, and deploy “Claude,” a ChatGTP-like AI chatbox.
According to the Financial Times, Google Cloud received around a 10% interest in Anthropic.
Bankman-Fried personally entered a not-guilty plea to all eight fraud and conspiracy-related accusations brought against him on January 3. It is yet unknown where most of the FTX bankruptcy case debt will come from. Bankman-Fried is still under house arrest at his parents’ California home.
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