Because of its investment, FTX owns shares in Anthropic. In bankruptcy, those shares will be sold in some form to new investors in exchange for cash, at whatever the current value is. Just like any other asset.
In theory, I suppose that new investor could be Anthropic itself doing a stock buyback, but that would be extremely unusual. Buybacks are for mature companies with excess cash, not growing startups.
Let's say for sake of argument the investment by FTX was made at a valuation of $1B and Anthropic is now worth $10B.
Could Anthropic now say, "Oh no, that money was stolen, the investment was never valid, we're returning every last cent." and essentially do a huge share buyback at a steep discount to current valuation?
I guess that's not how corporate liquidation work.
A liquidator will evaluate the assets current market value and try to liquidate them in the most advantageous way for creditors.
Which means: they'll try to get at least the valuation that Anthropic got from the AWS deal. The problem is: they need to find someone willing to buy these shares at this price. If they do so, FTX creditors will be happy.
As a very crude analogy, if someone got access to my brokerage account and used to money in that to buy a Ferrari and got caught, do I get my money back or get the Ferrari (and presumably have to sell it)?
Bankruptcy court can do clawbacks, I'm curious how that could apply for an investment scenario though.. it's not exactly paying a creditor or buying a Porsche just before a bankruptcy...
Regardless of what's legally possible, it doesn't seem like an option that new FTX management would want to exercise, since they're trying to maximize the value of remaining assets for creditors.
Clawbacks would make sense for a charitable donation or shares that have gone down in value. For an investment that's increasing in value, it makes more sense to sell it at market.
Because of its investment, FTX owns shares in Anthropic. In bankruptcy, those shares will be sold in some form to new investors in exchange for cash, at whatever the current value is. Just like any other asset.
In theory, I suppose that new investor could be Anthropic itself doing a stock buyback, but that would be extremely unusual. Buybacks are for mature companies with excess cash, not growing startups.