# Sam Bankman-Fried

> Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/sam_bankman_fried
> Updated: 2026-07-28
> Fact-checked: 2026-07-28
> Categories: AI Incidents & Controversies, AI Safety, People, Venture Capital
> License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) - attribute to "AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai)"
> Cite as: AI Wiki. "Sam Bankman-Fried." aiwiki.ai, 28 Jul 2026. https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/sam_bankman_fried
> From AI Wiki (https://aiwiki.ai), the free encyclopedia of artificial intelligence. Reuse freely with attribution.

Sam Bankman-Fried (born 1992), often called SBF, is an American former cryptocurrency executive who founded the trading firm Alameda Research and the FTX exchange. A federal jury convicted him on November 2, 2023, of seven fraud, conspiracy, and money-laundering counts arising from the diversion of billions of dollars from FTX customers, investors, and Alameda lenders. On March 28, 2024, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan sentenced him to 25 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered forfeiture of $11.02 billion. [1][2]

The Justice Department described the scheme as one of the largest financial frauds in United States history. It said at sentencing that the fraud caused losses exceeding $8 billion for FTX customers, $1.7 billion for FTX investors, and $1.3 billion for Alameda lenders. [1]

Bankman-Fried is relevant to the history of artificial intelligence because he was briefly a major funder of work associated with [AI safety](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/ai_safety) and [effective altruism](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/effective_altruism). The FTX Future Fund listed safe AI development among its grantmaking priorities, and Bankman-Fried led [Anthropic](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/anthropic)'s $580 million Series B financing in 2022. After FTX entered bankruptcy, its estate arranged sales of 44,539,240 Anthropic shares for about $1.34 billion in total. [6][9][13][14]

His conviction and sentence remain in force. The trial court denied his motion for a new trial on April 28, 2026, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the judgment in full on June 12, 2026. The Justice Department's clemency database listed a pending "Pardon after Completion of Sentence" case as of July 13, 2026. Two days later, the Senate agreed by unanimous consent to a nonbinding resolution opposing any pardon, commutation, or other federal clemency for him. [10][2][11][12]

## Early life and business career

Bankman-Fried is the son of two Stanford Law School professors. He studied physics and mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated in 2014. He then worked as a quantitative trader at Jane Street Capital. He left in 2017 and founded Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency trading firm, before founding FTX in 2019. [3][4]

TIME reported that Bankman-Fried launched Alameda with Tara Mac Aulay, who had led the Centre for Effective Altruism, and that the firm's early financing included money from donors associated with effective altruism. Alameda initially profited from differences in cryptocurrency prices between the United States and Asian markets. [4][5]

Bankman-Fried served as Alameda's chief executive from 2017 to 2021 and as FTX's chief executive from its founding until November 2022. FTX customers could trade cryptocurrencies and derivatives, borrow funds, and trade on margin. The Second Circuit's account of the trial record says FTX was handling about $10 billion to $15 billion in daily trading volume in 2022. Alameda was a major market maker on the exchange and had access to features that ordinary customers did not, including the ability to maintain a negative balance. [2]

The rise in cryptocurrency prices made Bankman-Fried one of the industry's richest executives on paper. Reuters reported that Forbes estimated his net worth at $26 billion in October 2021. That was a dated estimate based largely on private-company and cryptocurrency values, not a measure of liquid personal assets. [4]

## Effective altruism and political giving

Bankman-Fried became a prominent advocate of "earning to give," an approach associated with effective altruism in which a person pursues a high-income career in order to donate more. TIME reported that he met [William MacAskill](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/william_macaskill), a co-founder of the effective altruism movement, while at MIT, and that early Alameda staff and backers had strong ties to that community. [5]

Bankman-Fried presented risk-taking as part of that strategy. In a 2020 interview later quoted by Reuters, he said that maximizing expected value could imply choosing substantially riskier strategies than those that felt intuitively comfortable. Within effective altruism, his giving agenda was associated with [longtermism](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/longtermism), which assigns moral importance to effects on the long-run future. [4][5]

His philanthropy and political spending overlapped with his stated interest in reducing risks from pandemics, advanced AI, and other threats to the long-term future. Public campaign-finance data reviewed by Axios attributed about $37 million in 2022-cycle spending to Bankman-Fried, almost all of it supporting Democratic candidates and causes. [6][7]

The campaign-finance conspiracy alleged in the government's original 2022 case was not one of the seven counts on which the jury convicted him. The trial record nevertheless contained evidence about political giving. Caroline Ellison testified that Bankman-Fried directed the use of funds for political contributions, and Nishad Singh testified that he signed blank checks so donations could be concealed as coming from him. The Second Circuit summarized this evidence while affirming the fraud convictions. [2]

## The FTX Future Fund

The FTX Future Fund was announced on February 28, 2022, by Nick Beckstead, William MacAskill, Leopold Aschenbrenner, and Ketan Ramakrishnan. Its announcement said it planned to distribute at least $100 million in 2022 and could deploy as much as $1 billion if it found enough opportunities. The listed areas of interest included "the safe development of artificial intelligence," catastrophic biological risk, institutional improvement, economic growth, international relations, and effective altruism. [6]

The fund moved quickly. TIME later reported more than $160 million in grants to effective altruist causes in less than nine months. That figure should not be read as proof that every announced commitment reached a recipient. When the fund's team resigned on November 11, 2022, it said it could no longer process grants and that many committed grants would probably not be honored. [5][8]

The resignation ended the fund as an operating grantmaker. Open Philanthropy, which did not receive FTX money, wrote in its review of 2023 that the Future Fund had been a large funder of pandemic prevention and AI-risk work and that its collapse left a "sizable funding gap" in those areas. [19]

## The Anthropic financing

On April 29, 2022, Anthropic announced a $580 million Series B round led by Bankman-Fried. Anthropic described itself as an AI safety and research company studying how to make large models more steerable, robust, and interpretable. The announcement named Caroline Ellison, Jim McClave, Nishad Singh, Jaan Tallinn, and the Center for Emerging Risk Research as other participants. [9]

Anthropic's announcement did not specify how much money came from each participant. Bankruptcy filings later documented that the FTX estate held 44,539,240 Series B preferred shares through Clifton Bay Investments and arranged to sell them in two tranches. [9][13][14][20]

The cited criminal and bankruptcy records do not accuse Anthropic of participating in FTX's fraud. Its role in the bankruptcy was that of a private company whose shares had become a valuable estate asset. [2][13][14]

## Collapse of FTX

In late summer and early fall of 2022, rapid increases in Federal Reserve interest rates drained market liquidity and cryptocurrency prices fell. Alameda's net asset value declined from more than $40 billion in late 2021 to about $10 billion by June 2022, according to evidence summarized by the Second Circuit. On November 2, publication of an Alameda balance sheet triggered a surge of customer withdrawals. Bankman-Fried was replaced as FTX chief executive on November 11, and FTX and related entities filed for bankruptcy. [2]

Trial witnesses described how FTX software gave Alameda an effectively unlimited ability to withdraw customer assets. Gary Wang testified that the arrangement eventually included a $65 billion line of credit. Ellison testified that Bankman-Fried directed her to use customer funds to repay lenders and to prepare misleading balance sheets. Singh described political donations funded through checks signed in his name. All three had pleaded guilty and testified under cooperation agreements. [2]

The Justice Department said at sentencing that the fraud caused losses of more than $8 billion to FTX customers, more than $1.7 billion to FTX investors, and more than $1.3 billion to Alameda lenders. [1]

## Conviction and sentence

Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas in December 2022 and extradited to the United States. An August 2023 superseding indictment charged the seven counts that went to trial. [2][24]

He was initially released on a $250 million personal recognizance bond and confined to his parents' California home. In August 2023, Judge Kaplan revoked his bail after finding probable cause to believe that he had attempted to tamper with witnesses, including by giving a reporter private writings by Ellison. [4][24]

| Count | Charge | Statute |
|---|---|---|
| One | Wire fraud on FTX customers | 18 U.S.C. sections 1343 and 2 |
| Two | Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on FTX customers | 18 U.S.C. section 1349 |
| Three | Wire fraud on Alameda lenders | 18 U.S.C. sections 1343 and 2 |
| Four | Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on Alameda lenders | 18 U.S.C. section 1349 |
| Five | Conspiracy to commit securities fraud | 18 U.S.C. section 371; 15 U.S.C. sections 78j(b) and 78ff |
| Six | Conspiracy to commit commodities fraud | 18 U.S.C. section 371; 7 U.S.C. sections 9(1) and 13(a)(5) |
| Seven | Conspiracy to commit money laundering | 18 U.S.C. section 1956(h) |

The trial began on October 3, 2023, and lasted four weeks. Bankman-Fried testified and denied intending to steal customer money. The jury found him guilty on every count on November 2. Judge Kaplan imposed the 25-year sentence, three years of supervised release, and the $11.02 billion forfeiture judgment on March 28, 2024. [1][2][4]

## Post-trial proceedings and clemency request

In February 2026, Bankman-Fried filed a motion for a new trial based on three people whose proposed testimony he described as newly discovered. Judge Kaplan denied the motion on April 28. The order said Bankman-Fried had known all three people and the substance of their proposed testimony before trial, and found no basis for a new trial. [10]

The Second Circuit heard his direct appeal on November 4, 2025, and decided it on June 12, 2026. Bankman-Fried argued, among other things, that the trial court wrongly limited evidence that FTX and Alameda had assets capable of making customers whole, restricted advice-of-counsel testimony, gave flawed jury instructions, mishandled discovery, and imposed an improper forfeiture judgment. Judges Parker, Lee, and Kahn rejected those arguments and affirmed the judgment in full. Parker wrote the opinion. [2]

On the proposed repayment defense, the court relied on the Supreme Court's 2025 decision in *Kousisis v. United States*. It held that federal wire fraud did not require Bankman-Fried to intend a net economic loss: obtaining money or property through material deception was enough even if he believed assets might later be repaid. The court also upheld the in personam forfeiture judgment and rejected his Eighth Amendment challenge. [2]

The Justice Department's public data file lists clemency case P338490 for Samuel Bankman-Fried, federal register number 37244-510, as pending and classifies the requested relief as "Pardon after Completion of Sentence." The status page defines "Pending" only to mean that a case has been opened and is under review. It is not a grant of clemency. [11]

On July 15, 2026, the Senate agreed to S. Res. 772, which states that Bankman-Fried should not receive a pardon, commutation, or any other federal clemency. The resolution expresses the sense of the Senate and does not limit the president's constitutional pardon power. [12]

## Sale of the Anthropic shares

The FTX bankruptcy estate sold or contracted to sell its Anthropic shares through Clifton Bay Investments. The bankruptcy court approved procedures for the sale in February 2024 after the estate reached a compromise with customers who had objected. Court filings provide exact share counts and prices. [13][14][20][21]

| Filing and transaction | Shares | Aggregate price | Filing status |
|---|---:|---:|---|
| March 22, 2024 purchase agreement | 29,465,891 | $884,109,327 | The bankruptcy court approved the sale, and the estate reported it closed on April 8, 2024 |
| May 31, 2024 purchase agreements | 15,073,349 | $452,268,300 | The filing says 21 purchasers agreed to buy 100 percent of the Anthropic shares then held by the estate |
| Total | 44,539,240 | $1,336,377,627 | Sum of the two filed transactions |

The first tranche represented about 66.2 percent of the estate's holding. Its largest buyer was ATIC Third International Investment Company, which agreed to pay just under $500 million for 16,664,167 shares. Jane Street agreed to buy about $100 million, and funds managed by Fidelity agreed to buy about $45 million. [13]

The second filing lists G Squared VI Holdco as the largest buyer, with 4,499,325 shares for $134,999,997. It also lists Forge-managed vehicles, funds associated with SCVC Advisors, Damac Capital, Collab LTSE, and other purchasers. The estate's financial adviser stated that the 15,073,349 shares represented all Anthropic shares the estate still held. [14]

A later estate filing described the Anthropic shares as having been sold for approximately $1.3 billion in aggregate and as one part of about $1.6 billion raised through several major asset sales. The proceeds became estate assets available for the bankruptcy process; they were not retained by Bankman-Fried or redirected to the Future Fund. [23]

In May 2026, Anthropic announced a $65 billion Series H financing at a $965 billion post-money valuation. That company-level valuation is not directly comparable with the estate's 2024 price per preferred share. Dilution, share classes, financing terms, and changes in Anthropic's capital structure prevent a reliable calculation of what the former FTX holding would have been worth in 2026. [15]

## Charitable recoveries and impact on AI-safety funding

The court-appointed FTX examiner reported that foundation grants had come from several bank accounts, including accounts containing commingled customer and corporate funds. Estate lawyers contacted more than 300 nonprofits that together had received more than $200 million from the FTX Group. By May 2024, the estate had recovered about $70 million from more than 50 nonprofits without litigation and was continuing to assess other recovery actions. [16]

Effective Ventures US and Effective Ventures UK announced in December 2023 that they had paid the estate $26,786,503 in settlements. They said the payment equaled 100 percent of the money the two entities received from FTX and the FTX Foundation in 2022. [17]

The estate also sought information from AI-related recipients. Bloomberg Law reported that an October 2023 bankruptcy motion said FTX had transferred at least $6.5 million to the [Center for AI Safety](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/center_for_ai_safety) in 2022 and sought records about the payments and related agreements. A request for discovery is not a finding of wrongdoing by the recipient. [18]

For AI-safety philanthropy, the documented effects were the cancellation of unfulfilled Future Fund grants, recovery demands directed at some recipients, and the loss of a funder that other organizations described as significant. The evidence does not support treating every announced grant as money delivered, or every charitable recipient as implicated in Bankman-Fried's crimes. The episode instead illustrates the funding and governance risks created when a research field depends heavily on a small number of wealthy donors. [8][16][19]

The response within effective altruism was not limited to repayment demands. The producers of an April 2022 interview in which Bankman-Fried had defended a high-risk approach added a post-collapse note saying they no longer endorsed the episode. Together with Open Philanthropy's description of the funding gap, that response documents both reputational and financial effects without implying that all organizations or researchers in the field were responsible for FTX's conduct. [19][22]

## See also

- [Anthropic](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/anthropic)
- [Effective altruism](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/effective_altruism)
- [Longtermism](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/longtermism)
- [AI safety](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/ai_safety)
- [Center for AI Safety](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/center_for_ai_safety)
- [Open Philanthropy](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/open_philanthropy)

## References

1. U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, "Samuel Bankman-Fried Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison," March 28, 2024. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/samuel-bankman-fried-sentenced-25-years-prison
2. United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, "United States v. Bankman-Fried," No. 24-961-cr, decided June 12, 2026. https://ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/OPN/24-961_opn.pdf
3. MIT Educational Studies Program, "Sam Bankman-Fried: ESP Biography." https://esp.mit.edu/teach/teachers/sambf/bio.html
4. Reuters, "Who Is Sam Bankman-Fried, the Onetime Crypto Mogul Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison?" March 28, 2024. https://www.investing.com/news/economy/who-is-sam-bankmanfried-the-onetime-crypto-mogul-facing-decades-in-prison-3356342
5. TIME, "Exclusive: Effective Altruist Leaders Were Repeatedly Warned About Sam Bankman-Fried Years Before FTX Collapsed," March 15, 2023. https://time.com/6262810/sam-bankman-fried-effective-altruism-alameda-ftx/
6. Nick Beckstead, William MacAskill, Leopold Aschenbrenner, and Ketan Ramakrishnan, "Announcing the Future Fund," Effective Altruism Forum, February 28, 2022. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2mx6xrDrwiEKzfgks/announcing-the-future-fund-1
7. Axios, "Bankman-Fried Spent Millions on Democratic Campaigns," November 15, 2022. https://www.axios.com/2022/11/15/ftz-crypto-bankman-fried-democrats-midterms-campaigns
8. Nick Beckstead, Leopold Aschenbrenner, Avital Balwit, and Ketan Ramakrishnan, "The FTX Future Fund Team Has Resigned," Effective Altruism Forum, November 11, 2022. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xafpj3on76uRDoBja/the-ftx-future-fund-team-has-resigned-1/
9. Anthropic, "Anthropic Raises Series B to Build Steerable, Interpretable, Robust AI Systems," April 29, 2022. https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-raises-series-b-to-build-safe-reliable-ai
10. United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, "Memorandum and Order Denying Motion for a New Trial," No. 22-cr-673, April 28, 2026. https://business.cch.com/srd/2026-04-28-16-23-33-363-590940_2246_1042926.pdf
11. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Pardon Attorney, "Search for a Case," data current July 13, 2026. https://www.justice.gov/pardon/search-clemency-case-status
12. United States Senate, "S. Res. 772, Agreed to Senate," July 15, 2026. https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/BILLS-119sres772ats
13. FTX Trading Ltd. et al., "Disclosure Statement for Debtors' Joint Chapter 11 Plan of Reorganization," Case No. 22-11068-JTD, Doc. 19143, filed June 27, 2024, pages 61-62. Court document hosted by PwC. https://www.pwc.com/bs/en/services/business-restructuring-ftx-digital-markets/assets/disclosure-statement-for-debtors-joint-chapter-11-plan.pdf
14. FTX Trading Ltd. et al., "Notice of Proposed Sale of Anthropic Shares," Case No. 22-11068-JTD, Doc. 16380, filed May 31, 2024. Official case docket: https://restructuring.ra.kroll.com/FTX/Home-DocketInfo Access copy of the stamped filing: https://bebeez.it/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Anthropic-FTX_compressed-1.pdf
15. Anthropic, "Anthropic Raises $65B in Series H Funding at $965B Post-Money Valuation," May 28, 2026. https://www.anthropic.com/news/series-h
16. Robert J. Cleary, "Report of the Examiner," FTX Trading Ltd. et al., Case No. 22-11068-JTD, Doc. 15545, filed May 23, 2024, pages 179-182. https://documents.elevenflo.com/uuid_database_8_14_23/c140fcfd-60e7-4748-b455-fc63ba4dea9b.pdf
17. Zachary Robinson, "EV Updates: FTX Settlement and the Future of EV," Effective Altruism Forum, December 13, 2023. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HjsfHwqasyQMWRzZN/ev-updates-ftx-settlement-and-the-future-of-ev
18. Bloomberg Law, "FTX Moves to Subpoena AI Safety Group for Donation Information," October 25, 2023. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/bankruptcy-law/ftx-moves-to-subpoena-ai-safety-group-for-donation-information
19. Alexander Berger, "Our Progress in 2023 and Plans for 2024," Open Philanthropy, March 27, 2024. https://coefficientgiving.org/research/our-progress-in-2023-and-plans-for-2024/
20. FTX Trading Ltd. et al., "Notice of Proposed Sale of Anthropic Shares," Case No. 22-11068-JTD, Doc. 10241, filed March 22, 2024. Official case docket: https://restructuring.ra.kroll.com/FTX/Home-DocketInfo Access copy of the stamped filing: https://ent.news/2024/3/2313.pdf
21. Reuters, "Crypto Exchange FTX to Sell Shares in AI Startup Anthropic," February 22, 2024. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/crypto-exchange-ftx-sell-shares-201125864.html
22. 80,000 Hours, "Sam Bankman-Fried on Taking a High-Risk Approach to Crypto and Doing Good," April 14, 2022, with post-collapse editorial note. https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/sam-bankman-fried-high-risk-approach-to-crypto-and-doing-good/
23. FTX Trading Ltd. et al., "Debtors' Motion for Entry of an Order Approving the Stipulation of Settlement with John J. Ray III," Case No. 22-11068-JTD, Doc. 29834, filed March 2, 2025, page 8. Court document hosted by Epiq. https://document.epiq11.com/document/getdocumentsbydocket/?docketId=1144805&docketNumber=29834&projectCode=FTX&source=DM
24. Associated Press, "Jury Selection Begins in Trial of Fallen Cryptocurrency Mogul Sam Bankman-Fried," October 3, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/e1a6ca570bc401937a04bd15a404f8bd