The feds seized a stake in Anthropic from Sam Bankman-Fried's friends. What happened to the shares?

Two associates of Sam Bankman-Fried invested in Anthropic. After they were sentenced for fraud, their shares entered a legal black hole. ANGELA WEIS/Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI Sam Bankman-Fried's Anthropic stake was liquidated in bankruptcy court two years ago. The feds seized shares belonging to two co-conspirators, Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh. The government quietly sold those Anthropic shares last year. It's unclear where the money will go. A little over a year ago, the federal government acquired a stake in Anthropic without paying a penny. The shares were seized from associates of the crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried. From there, they disappeared into a legal black hole. As Anthropic rockets toward what could be the biggest IPO in history, those shares could now be worth billions of dollars. Bankman-Fried's own Anthropic stake was liquidated in the bankruptcy of his failed cryptocurrency exchange. The Anthropic equity owned by Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh, two associates who invested alongside him, took a different path. The government seized those shares and sold them to existing Anthropic shareholders, according to a person familiar with the sale. It's still uncl