Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX received court approval to sell its stake in Anthropic, an artificial-intelligence startup in which Amazon.com and Google late last year agreed to invest billions of dollars, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge John Dorsey in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of Wilmington, Del. approved the sale on Thursday after FTX reached a compromise with a group of customers who had objected to the sale. FTX invested $500 million in Anthropic in 2021 and holds a stake of about 7.8% in the company. In a court filing earlier this month, FTX said that “given the increased interest in AI and large language models, there has been significant appreciation in the value of the Anthropic shares.” In September, Amazon said it would be investing up to $4 billion in Anthropic. And in October, Google agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Anthropic, building on its earlier investment in the AI company. By getting approval for the sale procedures, FTX said it can unload the shares at “the most optimal and appropriate time.” Read more. (Subscription required.)
In related news, the FTX estate has agreed to drop a lawsuit that sought to claw back at least $323.5 million from the original owners of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange’s European unit, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Under a proposed settlement, the two main targets of the lawsuit—FTX Europe co-founders Patrick Gruhn and Robin Matzke—agreed to buy back the unit’s assets for $32.7 million. Details of the proposed settlement emerged in a Thursday court filing from the FTX estate. The deal still needs to be approved by a judge. The proposed settlement marks a retreat by the FTX bankruptcy estate, led by Chief Executive John J. Ray III. The suit against the former owners of the European unit was one of around a dozen lawsuits filed by FTX seeking to claw back billions of dollars from former FTX insiders and companies that did business with FTX under the leadership of its former CEO and founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. In recent months, the rising value of cryptocurrencies and FTX’s stake in artificial-intelligence startup Anthropic have made it less imperative for the estate to claw back funds. A lawyer for FTX said in court in January that the estate expected to repay customers in full. Filed in July, FTX’s lawsuit alleged that Bankman-Fried massively overpaid for Digital Assets DA AG, the Swiss firm that became FTX Europe, when FTX bought it for more than $376 million in a series of transactions in 2020 and 2021. At the time, Bankman-Fried was eager for his crypto exchange to become licensed in the European Union. Read more. (Subscription required.)
