The "OG" of effective altruism is destined to invest in AI unicorns. SBF emphasized multiple times in public interviews that his philosophy of action is based on "effective altruism," a concept that was instilled in him by his parents from a young age, promoting extreme altruism and the idea of bringing happiness to more people. He advocates maximizing capital accumulation to support grand future societal welfare goals, such as preventing epidemics, reducing global poverty, and so on.
Since 2014, SBF has been a part of the effective altruism movement, always emphasizing "earning to give" as a life career. In April 2022, during an interview with The New York Times, he stated that he would strive to choose a high-income profession so that he could donate more to charity in the future.
SBF's focus on disruptive technological fields aligns closely with the "long-termism" of effective altruism. He believes that AI is at the core of future technological transformation and could achieve long-term social value by enhancing efficiency or solving major issues (such as healthcare, climate, etc.). For example, he once planned to use funds to support the technological development aimed at preventing future pandemics, and the application of AI in the biomedicine field (such as protein folding research) is related to this.
In February 2022, SBF, along with several colleagues from FTX, announced the establishment of the "Future Fund" aimed at funding "ambitious projects designed to improve the long-term prospects for humanity." The fund is co-led by one of the founders of the Effective Altruism Center, Associate Professor Will MacAskill, along with other key figures in the movement. The Future Fund had committed to providing a total of $160 million in grants to various projects by early September, including support for research projects related to pandemic preparedness and economic growth. Of this, approximately $30 million was allocated to various organizations and individuals exploring artificial intelligence-related topics.
SBF and his colleagues also funded several other projects aimed at reducing long-term risks associated with artificial intelligence, including a grant of $1.25 million to the Alignment Research Centre. The organization aims to ensure that future AI systems align with human interests and prevent technology from "going out of control." They also provided $1.5 million to Cornell University for similar research.
The Future Fund has also provided nearly $6 million in funding to three projects related to large language models. Large language models are a class of increasingly powerful artificial intelligence that can write tweets, emails, and blog posts, and even generate computer programs. This funding aims to reduce the risk of such technologies being used to spread misinformation and to lower the likelihood of unintended and harmful behavior.
In addition to funding from the Future Fund, SBF and his colleagues also directly invested in several startups, such as a $500 million investment in Anthropic. Founded in 2021 by a group of effective altruists who left OpenAI, Anthropic is dedicated to enhancing the safety of artificial intelligence by developing its own language models, which can cost tens of millions of dollars to create.
Between 2021 and 2022, SBF and his FTX colleagues invested over $530 million in more than 70 AI-related companies, academic labs, think tanks, independent projects, and individual researchers through grants or investments to address concerns about the technology.
Besides Solana, SBF could have created another "Sui Miracle". In 2021, when SOL was massively unlocked, SBF made a classic remark: I would now buy all the SOL you have at a price of 3 dollars.
SBF's investment in Solana is based on its technological advantages. Solana is seen as a competitor to Ethereum, with higher transaction speeds and lower fees. In an interview in September 2021, SBF stated that Solana is "one of the few blockchains with long-term development potential" capable of supporting industrial-grade applications. FTX has a close relationship with Solana, and SBF personally holds a large amount of SOL, demonstrating his confidence in it.
Sui is a public blockchain founded by Evan Cheng, a former core member of Meta (Facebook) Libra, which continues the high-performance design philosophy of Libra, focusing on high performance and scalability. FTX Ventures invested in Sui's predecessor, Mysten Labs, in 2021, acquiring subscription rights and equity for 890 million Sui tokens, with a total value of approximately 100 million dollars ( Sui Blockchain Explained: How It Works and What You Need to Know ). SBF may have invested due to Sui's technological advantages (high throughput, low latency) and the team's background, similar to Solana.
As of May 7, 2025, Sui has a market capitalization of more than 115 US dollars, ranking in the top 20 of the global crypto market capitalization. 其技术特点包括高性能(每秒处理上万笔交易)、低费用,使用 Move 编程语言支持动态资产和复杂智能合约,成为高性能公链代表。 其 TVL(总锁仓价值)在 2025 年达 17.8 亿美元,超越 Avalanche 等老老牌公链。 由于其创立团队核心成员为华人,因此也吸引了大量华人开发者,其开发效率显有高于欧美团队,Sui 的生态系统在 DeFi 和游戏领域发展迅速迅速。
Sui is seen as a potential leader of the next generation of public chains, with a team background (core members from Meta Libra) that lends it authority. Support from investment institutions such as a16z, FTX Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures further enhances its industry status. Sui has a total supply of 10 billion tokens and a circulating market cap of approximately 11.5 billion USD, demonstrating the market's confidence in its future.
Forced to "sell at a loss" by hundreds of times, is it the heavens' jealousy of talent or just a naive illusion? In early 2025, FTX creditor Sunil Kavuri posted on X, pointing out that SUI reached a market value of $16 billion at $5.20, which means that the 890 million SUI tokens sold by FTX in March 2023 for $96 million are now worth $4.6 billion. As of now, although the price of SUI tokens has dropped to $3.4, they are still worth $3 billion.
FTX sold its shares back to Sui Network developer Mysten Labs in 2023, a few months after filing for bankruptcy. FTX Ventures had previously acquired these shares, which included equity in Mysten Labs and the right to purchase SUI tokens after investing $101 million in Mysten Labs' $300 million Series B funding round in 2022. This means that FTX Ventures sold these shares at a loss.
Sunil Kavuri's post prompts a reevaluation of SBF's investment vision. Looking back, the few leading investments made by FTX had a groundbreaking perspective, but due to FTX's bankruptcy liquidation, they had to be sold at a low price, and now the amount for individual asset sales counts in the hundreds of millions.
In March 2024, FTX sold about two-thirds of its stake in the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, which accounted for 8% of the total equity. The total amount of this sale reached $884 million, with ATIC, a subsidiary of the UAE sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, purchasing nearly $500 million of the Anthropic shares held by FTX. Currently, this stake is valued at approximately $3 billion.
In April 2024, FTX sold up to 30 million SOL at a significant discount price of $64, with a total value of approximately $1.9 billion, accounting for two-thirds of its total SOL holdings. This move attracted the attention of industry giants such as Galaxy Trading and Pantera Capital. According to Bloomberg, Galaxy Trading specifically created a $620 million fund to acquire FTX's discounted SOL. Based on the current SOL price of $148, this portion of assets is now valued at approximately $4.4 billion.
On May 6, 2025, according to the Financial Times, Anysphere, the company behind the AI code editor Cursor, completed a $900 million funding round led by Thrive Capital, reaching a valuation of $9 billion. FTX was a seed round investor in Cursor, but after its bankruptcy liquidation, its liquidation team sold the Cursor shares they held for $200,000, while those shares have now skyrocketed in value to about $500 million...
During the FTX liquidation, over $14 billion in assets were recovered, including cash, digital assets, and investments, but the specific assets sold and their sale prices at the time have not been disclosed. Looking back now, it is likely that the amount lost in sales should be measured in the tens of billions.
SBF's rise and fall reflects the fervor and fragility of the cryptocurrency industry. From betting on high-performance public chains to laying out strategies in the AI sector, his decisions always revolved around the grand narrative of "effective altruism," but ultimately fell into the abyss due to lack of risk control and moral ambiguity. Looking through SBF's forward-thinking investment vision, this round Sui may shine as brightly as the previous round's Solana, showcasing the industry's eternal pursuit of technological iteration and wealth effects. The wheels of industry iteration keep rolling forward, and more emerging fields will emerge in the future. The eternal question for investors is how to find quality targets among a multitude of new products.