Amazon's $190B Anthropic stake has ties to Bankman-Fried

Amazon's balance sheet lists a $190 billion investment that has connections to Sam Bankman-Fried, the former FTX CEO.

Bankman-Fried not only invested in Anthropic — a company in which Amazon now holds $190 billion in equity — but also provided funding to an entity that later became Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR). METR presents itself as an independent evaluator but has direct connections to the Effective Altruism movement.

METR has provided safety assurances for Amazon and Anthropic's AI models. It evaluates frontier AI companies such as Anthropic and Amazon, and worries about a "fast takeoff" where models with human "misalignment" could conceal "recursive" self-coding abilities to reach "superintelligence" and pose a threat to humans.

METR workers have a high "p(doom)" — their estimated probability of doom. These terms are actual jargon used by AI security professionals. If these concerns seem strange, they have a basis in the effective altruism movement.

METR's predecessor received a $1.25 million donation from Bankman-Fried's charity, the FTX Foundation. Today, METR continues to be staffed and financed by effective altruists.

The $1.25 million was given in July 2022, just four months before FTX collapsed as Bankman-Fried misappropriated FTX customer funds.

The donation funded the Alignment Research Center for more than a year before it rebranded as METR in 2023. METR eventually returned the $1.25 million in 2024, stating that "we now believe that this money morally (if not legally) belongs to FTX customers or creditors."

FTX was also a direct investor in Anthropic. In April 2022, Bankman-Fried purchased a $500 million stake in Anthropic with FTX customer money.

The United States will NEVER be an effective altruist country.

— Department of War CTO (@DoWCTO) September 16, 2026

Today, METR also gets funding from Good Ventures Foundation and Coefficient Giving, both effective altruism organizations.

Amazon has historical ties to effective altruism

Effective altruism has become a trending topic, even prompting a US Department of War social media account to declare that effective altruism is misaligned with Americanism.

Amazon's second-quarter 10-Q filing reveals its equity in Anthropic: approximately $98 billion in convertible notes and roughly $92 billion in non-voting preferred stock.

METR separated from the Alignment Research Center, which was run by Paul Christiano, formerly a housemate of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Christiano also recruited METR's CEO Beth Barnes, who has been associated with effective altruism since her university days.

Other METR employees also have connections to the University of Oxford, a center for effective altruism.

Daniela Amodei, Dario's sister, serves as Anthropic's president. She is married to Holden Karnofsky, an Anthropic employee who co-founded two effective altruism organizations: GiveWell and what is now Coefficient Giving.

David Sacks, previously the White House AI czar under Donald Trump, instructed Amodei to "stop pretending METR is independent."

Overall, Amazon has undeniable financial connections to Anthropic and its METR safety team. At $190 billion and increasing with each valuation, Amazon's stake is significant.

Amazon has also directly engaged with METR. In 2025, METR conducted a pilot review of Amazon's in-house frontier AI model.