Money Stuff: The Podcast · Friday, July 31, 2026
The discussion draws a parallel between Situational Awareness's funding issues and Sam Bankman-Fried's early, significant investment in Anthropic. Bankman-Fried's stake in Anthropic, acquired with funds from his crypto exchange, is presented as an example of how risky funding can jeopardize long-term bets, even if the underlying thesis was correct.
“Like one way to think about Sam Bankman Freed is that he was a really smart venture capital investor in AI like he bought I think he had a couple of other like very cool positions, but certainly he was a very early, very big investor in anthropic and bought a stake in Anthropic that you know, they sold it a couple of years ago to in the bankruptcy estate.”
“But he bought that with like the very worst short term funding imaginable, which is like money stolen from the customers cryptoi exchange.”
“If Sam Bankmanfree had kept his Anthropic bet, it would be worth one hundred billion dollars today.”