Sam Bankman-Fried’s Venture Bets Would Have Made Him $100 Billion Richer Had He Stayed Out Of Prison

Sam Bankman-Fried, currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for orchestrating one of history's largest financial frauds, is being discussed on X for his venture genius. Despite stealing over $8 billion from FTX customers to fund investments, his early bets on companies like Anthropic and Cursor are seen as astonishing. Rory O'Driscoll of Scale Venture Partners notes Bankman-Fried's talent for identifying promising ventures before the ChatGPT moment. Anthropic, an AI leader, is now valued at $900 billion, while AI coding specialist Cursor, after a deal with SpaceX, could be valued at $60 billion. Bankman-Fried's $500 million investment in Anthropic, now diluted to an 8% stake, would be worth $80 billion, a 160-fold return. His $200,000 investment in Cursor is now worth $3 billion. He also invested in Solana, K5 Global, and Robinhood. Had FTX's bankruptcy estate not sold off the portfolio, these positions alone could be worth around $100 billion. Michael Burry commented that if Bankman-Fried had done nothing illegal, he might have been the best VC in history. However, these lucrative investments were a direct byproduct of his fraud.