The FTX bankruptcy estate's decision to sell off early stakes in companies like Cursor and Anthropic at cost or modest premiums has proven extraordinarily expensive. A $200,000 pre-seed investment in Anysphere, the company behind the AI coding tool Cursor, was sold back for the same amount in 2023. That stake, now worth roughly $3 billion after SpaceX agreed to acquire Cursor in June 2026 at a $60 billion valuation, represents a 15,000x return the estate left on the table.
The Cursor stake that got away
Alameda Research put $200,000 into Anysphere in 2022 for about a 5% stake at a roughly $4 million valuation. When FTX collapsed, the estate sold that stake back to the company at cost. Less than three years later, SpaceX announced an all-stock deal for Cursor at a $60 billion valuation. The discarded 5% would be worth about $3 billion today.
Anthropic: a similar tale
FTX invested roughly $500 million in Anthropic in 2021 for an approximately 8% stake. The estate sold that holding in two tranches during 2024 for a total of about $1.336 billion. Since then, Anthropic raised $30 billion at a $380 billion post-money valuation, making that 8% stake worth over $30 billion. The forced sale captured only a fraction of what the position eventually became.
Robinhood and Solana: more missed upside
Emergent Fidelity Technologies, controlled by Sam Bankman-Fried, bought a 7.6% stake in Robinhood for about $648 million in 2022. The US Marshals Service later sold 55.3 million Robinhood shares back to the company at $10.96 each in 2023, a $605.7 million deal. At Robinhood's current valuation near $87 billion, that same block would be worth over $5 billion.
Alameda also sold roughly 30 million locked SOL tokens at about $64 each in 2024, with Galaxy Digital and Pantera Capital as buyers. SOL peaked near $293 in early 2025 before sliding to about $74. Even at today's price, that sale would have been worth more than double what the estate received.
The Sui buyback
Mysten Labs bought back FTX's Sui equity and token warrants for about $96 million in 2023, close to the original $101 million investment. The move allowed Mysten to reclaim full control of the Sui blockchain project.
Commentators have noted that Bankman-Fried showed strong investment acumen, but the forced liquidation of assets during the bankruptcy process prevented the estate from realizing what would have been enormous gains. The question now is whether future bankruptcy proceedings will learn from this pattern of distressed sales that leave billions behind.
