The US sold a seized Anthropic stake now worth up to $5 billion

The US government made one of the great venture investments in history by accident, then sold it right before the payoff.

The trade

Business Insider reports that the US Marshals Service quietly sold the Anthropic stakes seized from two former FTX executives. Caroline Ellison put $10 million and Nishad Singh $40 million into Anthropic’s Series B in March 2022. Both forfeited the shares in their criminal cases, and during 2025 the Marshals sold them to existing Anthropic investors at an undisclosed price.

Then Anthropic’s valuation went vertical. Today that $50 million position would be worth between $2.6 billion, by PitchBook’s estimate, and up to $5 billion, by a UCLA professor’s. Whatever the government received in 2025, it was a fraction of that.

Where the money went

As of June 2026, none of the identified proceeds had reached the FTX bankruptcy estate. Singh’s attorney says his client wants the money distributed to victims quickly. The buyers were existing Anthropic investors, and the transaction terms were never disclosed.

The policy gap

Seized crypto-era assets keep turning into AI equity, and there is no framework for when the state should hold an appreciating position and when it should liquidate. Forfeiture practice was built around cars, cash and real estate, assets that mostly lose value in storage. A private AI stake that can multiply fifty times in three years breaks the assumption that faster sales serve victims better. The open question is whether any of the difference between the 2025 sale price and today’s estimates will ever be recoverable for FTX creditors.