FTX Sold Anysphere Stake for $200K Before AI Firm Soared to $9B Valuation
FTX Misses Out on AI Windfall After Selling Anysphere Stake for $200K Ahead of $9B Surge
The estate of collapsed crypto exchange FTX may have missed out on a fortune after offloading its early stake in AI startup Anysphere for just $200,000—months before the company’s valuation skyrocketed to $9 billion.
The stake was originally purchased in April 2022 by Alameda Research, FTX’s sister trading firm, through a vehicle called Clifton Bay Investments LLC (previously Alameda Research Ventures LLC). At the time, Anysphere was raising a modest $400,000 pre-seed round, with support from both Alameda and Heroic Ventures, according to Crunchbase.
By April 2023, amidst the ongoing FTX bankruptcy proceedings, the estate quietly sold off that same stake for its original purchase price of $200,000. What seemed like a routine asset liquidation now appears in hindsight to be a costly oversight.
Founded in 2022, Anysphere is the company behind Cursor, a fast-rising AI-powered coding assistant that helps developers write, edit, and understand code using advanced natural language processing. Think of it as GitHub Copilot’s younger, faster-growing rival—tailored for the modern developer stack.
Anysphere’s momentum since that early exit has been staggering. The company raised $8 million in seed funding in October 2023, followed by a $60 million Series A in mid-2024 and a $105 million Series B later that year. In April 2025, the company secured a jaw-dropping $900 million round led by Thrive Capital, an investor also known for backing OpenAI. Andreessen Horowitz and Accel are among other prominent participants.
The result? A valuation leap from $2.5 billion to $9 billion, all within a matter of months.
Driving this explosive growth is Anysphere’s reported annual recurring revenue of $200 million as of April—an extraordinary number for such a young firm. According to insiders cited by the Financial Times, Anysphere is now one of the fastest-growing software startups in the world.
The precise size of Alameda’s equity in Anysphere was never disclosed, but industry observers estimate that if the estate had held onto the stake, it could have been worth hundreds of millions today. Instead, in a move perhaps driven by the urgency to cover escalating legal and administrative costs—now reportedly exceeding $500 million—the FTX estate settled for a break-even exit.
This isn’t the first time FTX has parted ways with promising assets under pressure. In mid-2024, the estate sold its remaining shares in Anthropic, another AI firm now considered a cornerstone of the sector. That sale, like the Anysphere one, occurred before significant value appreciation.