Anthropic's Series B, as described to a court
A motion by the FTX debtors, filed in the Delaware bankruptcy court on 3 February 2024, describes the largest cheque in Anthropic's Series B more precisely than any press release: on 5 October 2021 Alameda Research Ventures paid $500,000,000 under an agreement for future equity; on 30 April 2022 the round closed; and on 13 May that agreement converted into 44,539,240 Series B preferred shares at $11.2261 each.
Why it matters
A filing made under a duty to a court gives what an announcement does not: when exactly the money arrived, in what form, and what share it bought. At the closing of the round on 30 April 2022 the investor held about 13.56 per cent of Anthropic on a fully diluted basis, falling to 7.84 per cent by January 2024 as later rounds diluted it. It is a rare case in which the structure of an AI laboratory's private funding is visible in a document rather than in a retelling.
The motion calls the instrument a Modified Simple Agreement for Future Equity; the holder at the time of filing is Clifton Bay Investments LLC, formerly Alameda Research Ventures LLC. It explains that Series B preferred stock and the other preferred series are generally issued to outside investors and convert into N-Class Common Stock or Voting Common Stock on certain events, including a public offering or a merger with a shell company. The motion itself sought approval of procedures for selling those shares, with a hearing set for 22 February 2024. What this record does not assert. The motion gives no total for the round. Anthropic's own announcement, dated 29 April 2022 and read on 30 September 2026, gives it: $580 million raised in a Series B, led by Sam Bankman-Fried, with Caroline Ellison, Jim McClave, Nishad Singh, Jaan Tallinn and the Center for Emerging Risk Research taking part. The announcement is dated 29 April and the motion says the round closed on 30 April; the record keeps each document's own date and does not reconcile them. The record does not assert that the investment carried neither votes nor a board seat: the motion does not say so, and only describes what the preferred shares convert into.