There are two Effective Altruism Sams in the AI world: one enjoying the spotlight in the industry, and the other selling

Di dalam kripto world, SBF has always played the role of a collection of contradictions – he is a philanthropist who claims to be an evangelist of effective altruism, and a capital operator who is well versed in market games; he claims to protect the future of mankind through technology investment, but drags millions of investors into the abyss due to the loss of control of systemic risks. Similarly, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also an effective altruist. He has repeatedly publicly emphasized that AGI development must be promoted under the premise of ensuring safety and benefit, trying to overcome the obstacles to the development of AI through technology, policies and social solutions. Two years after the collapse of the FTX empire, when we re-examined its investment map of technology for the benefit of mankind, we found that those advanced layouts that were once not understood gradually showed amazing foresight in the evolution of technology; and the tens of billions of assets that were forced to be liquidated have now doubled in value, which has become a regrettable regret.

The OG of effective altruism is destined to invest in AI unicorns

SBF has repeatedly emphasized in public interviews that his philosophy of action is based on effective altruism. His parents have instilled in him the idea of extreme altruism since he was a child, and he wants to bring happiness to more people. He advocates maximizing the accumulation of funds to support future social welfare, such as preventing epidemics and reducing global poverty.

SBF has been a member of the effective altruism movement since 2014, and he always emphasizes making money and doing good as a life career. In an interview with the New York Times in April 2022, he said that he would try his best to choose a high-income career so that he could donate more charitable funds in the future.

SBFs focus on disruptive technology is highly consistent with the long-termism of effective altruism. He believes that AI is the core of future technological change and may achieve long-term social value by improving efficiency or solving major problems (such as medical care, climate, etc.). For example, he once planned to use funds to support the research and development of technologies to prevent future epidemics, and the application of AI in the biomedical field (such as protein folding research) is related to this.

In February 2022, SBF and several FTX colleagues announced the establishment of the Future Fund to fund ambitious projects aimed at improving humanitys long-term prospects. The fund is led by Associate Professor Will MacAskill, one of the founders of the Center for Effective Altruism, and other key figures in the movement. The Future Fund has pledged to provide a total of $160 million in funding to various projects by early September, including support for research projects on epidemic preparedness and economic growth. Approximately $30 million of this was allocated to multiple organizations and individuals exploring AI-related issues.

SBF and its colleagues have also funded several other projects focused on reducing the long-term risks of AI, including a $1.25 million grant to the Alignment Research Centre, which aims to ensure that future AI systems are aligned with human interests and prevent the technology from “running out of control.” They have also given Cornell University $1.5 million for similar research.

The Future Fund also awarded nearly $6 million to three projects related to large language models, an increasingly powerful class of artificial intelligence that can write tweets, emails, blog posts, and even generate computer programs. The grants are intended to reduce the risk that such technology could be used to spread false information and to reduce the likelihood that it could lead to unintended and undesirable behavior.

In addition to funding from the Future Fund, SBF and its colleagues have also invested directly in some startups, such as investing $500 million in Anthropic. Founded in 2021 by a group of effective altruists who left OpenAI, Anthropic is committed to improving the safety of artificial intelligence by developing its own language models, which can cost tens of millions of dollars to develop.

In the two years from 2021 to 2022, SBF and his FTX colleagues invested more than $530 million in grants or investments in more than 70 AI-related companies, academic labs, think tanks, independent projects, and individual researchers to address concerns about the technology.

In addition to Solana, SBF could have created another Sui miracle

In 2021, when SOL was unlocked on a large scale, SBF made a classic quote: I will buy all the SOL you own at $3 now.

SBFs investment in Solana is based on its technological advantages. Solana is seen as a competitor to Ethereum, with higher transaction speeds and lower fees. SBF said in an interview in September 2021 that Solana is one of the few blockchains with long-term development potential and can support industrial-grade applications. FTX has a close relationship with Solana, and SBF personally holds a large amount of SOL, showing his confidence in it.

Sui is a public chain founded by Evan Cheng, a former core member of Meta (Facebook) Libra. It continues Libras high-performance design concept and focuses on high performance and scalability. FTX Ventures invested in Suis predecessor Mysten Labs in 2021, purchasing subscription rights and equity for 890 million Sui tokens, with a total value of approximately US$100 million (Sui Blockchain Explained: How It Works and What You Need to Know). SBF may have invested in Sui because of its technical advantages (high throughput, low latency) and team background, similar to Solana.

Suis mainnet was launched in May 2023. As of May 7, 2025, its market value exceeded 11.5 billion US dollars, ranking in the top 20 of the global cryptocurrency market value list. Its technical features include high performance (processing tens of thousands of transactions per second), low fees, and the use of the Move programming language to support dynamic assets and complex smart contracts, making it a representative of high-performance public chains. Its TVL (total locked value) reached 1.78 billion US dollars in 2025, surpassing old public chains such as Avalanche. Since the core members of its founding team are Chinese, it has also attracted a large number of Chinese developers, whose development efficiency is significantly higher than that of European and American teams. Suis ecosystem has developed rapidly in the fields of DeFi and games.

Sui is seen as a potential leader in the next generation of public chains, and its team background (from the core members of Meta Libra) gives it authority. The support of investment institutions such as a16z, FTX Ventures and Coinbase Ventures further enhances its industry status. Suis total supply is 10 billion tokens, with a circulating market value of approximately US$11.5 billion, demonstrating the markets confidence in its future.

Forced to sell the plane for hundreds of times, is it because God is jealous of his talent or is he just too naive?

At the beginning of 2025, FTX creditor Sunil Kavuri posted on X that SUI reached $5.20 with a market value of $16 billion, which means that the 890 million SUI tokens sold by FTX for $96 million in March 2023 are now worth $4.6 billion. As of now, although the price of SUI tokens has fallen back to $3.4, it is still worth $3 billion.

FTX sold the stake back to Sui network developer Mysten Labs in 2023, a few months after filing for bankruptcy. FTX Ventures previously acquired the stake, which included equity in Mysten Labs and the right to purchase SUI tokens in 2022 after investing $101 million in Mysten Labs’ $300 million Series B round. This means that FTX Ventures sold the stake at a loss.

Sunil Kavuris post made people re-examine SBFs investment vision. Looking back, FTXs initial lead investments were ahead of their time, but because FTX went bankrupt and had to be sold at a low price, the amount of a single asset sold is now in the hundreds of millions.

In March 2024, FTX sold about two-thirds of its shares in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, which accounted for 8% of the total share capital. The total amount of the sale reached US$884 million. ATIC, a subsidiary of the UAE sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, will purchase nearly US$500 million of FTXs Anthropic shares. The shares are currently valued at approximately US$3 billion.

In April 2024, FTX sold up to 30 million SOL at a heavily discounted price of $64, with a total value of approximately $1.9 billion, accounting for two-thirds of the total SOL it holds. This move attracted the attention of industry giants such as Galaxy Trading and Pantera Capital. According to Bloomberg, Galaxy Trading created a $620 million fund to acquire FTXs discounted SOL at that time. Based on the current SOL price of $148, this part of the assets is currently valued at approximately $4.4 billion.

On May 6, 2025, the Financial Times reported that Anysphere, the company behind the AI code editor Cursor, completed a round of financing led by Thrive Capital with a valuation of $9 billion. FTX was a seed round investor in Cursor, but after bankruptcy liquidation, its liquidation team sold its Cursor shares for $200,000, and the value of these shares has now soared to about $500 million…

During the liquidation period, FTX recovered more than $14 billion in assets, including cash, digital assets and investments, but the specific assets sold and the selling prices at the time were not disclosed. Looking back now, the amount of money sold is probably in the tens of billions of dollars.

SBFs ups and downs reflect the enthusiasm and fragility of the cryptocurrency industry. From betting on high-performance public chains to laying out the AI track, its decisions have always revolved around the grand narrative of effective altruism, but ultimately fell into the abyss due to lack of risk control and moral ambiguity. Following SBFs advanced investment vision, this round of Sui may shine like Solana in the previous round, showing the industrys eternal pursuit of technological iteration and wealth effect. The wheel of industry iteration is constantly rolling forward, and more emerging fields will emerge in the future. How to find high-quality targets among a number of emerging products is an eternal topic for investors.

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This article is sourced from the internet: There are two Effective Altruism Sams in the AI world: one enjoying the spotlight in the industry, and the other selling unicorns in prison

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Original author: 0x Sketon , DeFi researcher Compiled by Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina ) Translator: CryptoLeo ( @LeoAndCrypto ) Editors note: After experiencing Black Monday and CNBCs blunder, the market has cooled down again. BTC remains at around $80,000, most altcoins have been halved compared to a year ago, and the secondary market is wailing. Friends who are betting on dogs may still encounter one or two golden dogs. In general, the development of tariffs and Trumps big mouth characteristics have led to the current market being completely driven by news, and the difficulty of making money by speculating in cryptocurrencies has risen again. DeFi researcher 0x Sketon wrote about 11 DeFi protocols worth participating in on Solana to earn income recently, among which lending and stablecoin deposits are…