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Amazon is sitting on a $190 billion stake in Anthropic. And buried inside that number is a connection most people haven’t looked at closely enough.
The investment breaks down into roughly $98 billion in convertible notes and $92 billion in non-voting preferred stock. Big money, clearly. But the story gets messier when you start pulling on the threads connecting Anthropic, Amazon, and a network of effective altruism figures — some of whom trace back, directly or indirectly, to Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of FTX.
Bankman-Fried’s Fingerprints on AI Safety
Before FTX collapsed, Bankman-Fried wasn’t just running a crypto exchange. He was funding things. One of those things was the Model Evaluation and Threat Research organization, known as METR — an AI safety evaluator that now works with some of the biggest names in the industry. METR got $1.25 million from the FTX Foundation, which was Bankman-Fried’s effective altruism charity. After FTX went bankrupt, METR gave the money back. They cited moral concerns. Fair enough. But the original funding link is still there.
METR didn’t come out of nowhere. It grew out of the Alignment Research Center, which was led by Paul Christiano. Christiano wasn’t a stranger to Anthropic’s orbit — he was a former associate of Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO. The two reportedly shared a residence at one point. Christiano also recruited METR’s CEO, Beth Barnes. Several METR members have ties to the University of Oxford, which has long been a hub for effective altruism thinking.
So you’ve got an AI safety evaluator that was seeded by Bankman-Fried money, led by someone who came up alongside Anthropic’s CEO, and staffed partly by people from the effective altruism world. That’s a pretty tangled web for an organization meant to provide independent safety checks.
Amazon Brought METR In for a Pilot Review
Amazon ran a 2025 pilot review of its in-house AI model using METR. That’s not a small thing. METR’s whole job is to flag AI systems that might be developing dangerous capabilities — specifically what they call “recursive” self-coding abilities, where a model could theoretically rewrite and improve itself without human oversight. If that sounds like science fiction, it’s not really. It’s a concern serious AI researchers take seriously, and it’s why safety evaluators exist.
But the independence question keeps coming up. Daniela Amodei, Anthropic’s president, is deeply tied to the effective altruism movement. She’s married to Holden Karnofsky, who is both an Anthropic staffer and a co-founder of effective altruism initiatives including GiveWell and Coefficient Giving. Coefficient Giving, along with Good Ventures Foundation, also provides financial backing to METR. So the money flowing into METR comes partly from people who are also running Anthropic. That’s a conflict of interest worth naming plainly.
David Sacks, a former AI advisor, has raised concerns about METR’s independence. U.S. officials more broadly have expressed skepticism about whether effective altruism’s principles align with American national interests. That friction probably won’t go away quietly.
The Network Behind the Numbers
It’s worth slowing down on the personal connections here because they’re unusually dense. Dario Amodei and Paul Christiano lived together. Christiano built METR and brought in its leadership. Daniela Amodei runs Anthropic’s operations and is married to a man who co-founded the foundations now funding METR. The evaluator checking Anthropic’s safety is financially supported by people inside Anthropic’s own leadership circle.
None of that is necessarily corrupt. People who care about AI safety tend to know each other — it’s a small world. But when the stakes are $190 billion and the evaluations are supposed to be independent, the closeness matters.
Amazon’s commitment to Anthropic keeps growing as Anthropic’s valuation climbs. That’s not surprising — the company has been aggressive in its AI infrastructure bets. But the due diligence question lingers. How much does Amazon know about the METR relationship? How much does it care? The pilot review happened. The investment kept growing.
METR returned Bankman-Fried’s $1.25 million. Good Ventures Foundation and Coefficient Giving stepped in. The evaluations continue.
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly is Amazon’s stake in Anthropic worth?
Amazon’s Anthropic stake totals approximately $190 billion, made up of around $98 billion in convertible notes and $92 billion in non-voting preferred stock.
How is Sam Bankman-Fried connected to Anthropic’s AI safety evaluator?
Bankman-Fried’s FTX Foundation gave $1.25 million to METR, the AI safety organization that evaluates Anthropic-linked AI systems; METR later returned the funds after FTX’s bankruptcy, citing moral concerns.
Why It Matters
This investment by Amazon highlights the intertwining of major tech firms with figures and ideologies linked to effective altruism, a movement that has faced scrutiny following the collapse of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried's legal troubles. The connection raises questions about the future of ethical investing in the tech sector and the potential risks associated with backing entities that are tied to controversial figures. As the cryptocurrency and AI landscapes continue to evolve, this relationship could influence investor sentiment and regulatory scrutiny in both arenas.
