--- alias: - SBF born: 1992-03-06 category: AI & Effective Altruism created: 2026-06-19 location: Palo Alto, California summary: Sam Bankman-Fried is the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and the effective-altruism movement's largest benefactor, who directed FTX customer funds into longtermist causes and a 500 million dollar Anthropic investment before FTX collapsed in 2022 and he was convicted of fraud in 2023. tags: - Person - SamBankmanFried - FTX - EffectiveAltruism - Fraud - Cryptocurrency updated: 2026-06-19 --- Sam Bankman-Fried (born March 6, 1992) is an American entrepreneur who founded the trading firm Alameda Research and the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and who became the largest single funder of the [Effective Altruism](/concepts/effective-altruism/) movement before his businesses collapsed in fraud. A physics graduate of the [Massachusetts Institute of Technology](/organizations/massachusetts-institute-of-technology/) and a former Jane Street Capital trader, he was recruited into the "earning to give" branch of effective altruism by the philosopher [William MacAskill](/people/william-macaskill/) and built his fortune as a vehicle for longtermist philanthropy. He was convicted on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in November 2023.[^1][^2] ### FTX and Effective-Altruism Funding Bankman-Fried launched Alameda Research in 2017 and FTX in 2019, accumulating a paper fortune that briefly exceeded twenty billion dollars. Through the [FTX Future Fund](/organizations/ftx-future-fund/), announced in 2022, he directed money toward effective-altruism and longtermist causes, with AI existential risk and pandemic preparedness at the top of its priorities, channeling funds to the same research community around the [Future of Humanity Institute](/organizations/future-of-humanity-institute/) and the [Machine Intelligence Research Institute](/organizations/machine-intelligence-research-institute/) that Oxford academic longtermism and the [Rationalist Community](/concepts/rationalist-community/) had built. In 2022 he invested approximately 500 million dollars of FTX-derived capital in [Anthropic](/organizations/anthropic/), the AI-safety company founded by former [OpenAI](/organizations/openai/) researchers.[^2][^3] The Future Fund launched in February 2022, run by Nick Beckstead, Leopold Aschenbrenner, Avital Balwit, MacAskill, and Ketan Ramakrishnan, and stated it aimed to distribute at least 100 million dollars that year and potentially up to a billion. It ran a regranting program that handed discretionary budgets to independent grantmakers and committed roughly 160 million dollars across about 260 grants before FTX collapsed nine months later, leaving many recipients facing clawback demands from the bankruptcy estate. Bankman-Fried also became a major political donor, giving about 40 million dollars to mostly Democratic candidates and committees in the 2022 cycle and later admitting to a parallel stream of "dark" donations to Republicans, money that prosecutors charged was drawn from FTX customer funds.[^5][^6] ### The Collapse and Conviction FTX collapsed in November 2022 when it could not meet customer withdrawals, revealing that roughly eight billion dollars in customer deposits had been diverted to Alameda Research. Bankman-Fried was arrested, extradited, and tried in the Southern District of New York, where a jury convicted him on November 2, 2023; he was sentenced in March 2024 to twenty-five years in prison. The fraud destroyed the effective-altruism movement's largest funding source and discredited its public standing, accelerating the distancing from the label by figures including Anthropic's [Dario Amodei](/people/dario-amodei/) and contributing to the climate in which the Future of Humanity Institute was closed.[^1][^4] Judge Lewis Kaplan handed down the sentence on March 28, 2024 and ordered forfeiture of 11.02 billion dollars; prosecutors had sought 40 to 50 years against a statutory maximum of 110, while the defense had argued for about six and a half. Several of his closest associates pleaded guilty and testified against him, including Alameda chief Caroline Ellison, FTX cofounder Gary Wang, and engineering head Nishad Singh. The bankruptcy estate, led by restructuring executive John J. Ray III, recovered enough through asset sales (including the Anthropic stake and a rebound in crypto prices) to plan repayment of creditors at full claim value plus interest, while pursuing clawbacks against grant recipients; the effective-altruism umbrella body [Effective Ventures](/organizations/effective-ventures/) returned 26,786,503 dollars to the estate in 2024, the full sum it had received from FTX.[^7][^8] [^1]: *United States v. Samuel Bankman-Fried,* S.D.N.Y., conviction on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, November 2, 2023; sentencing March 2024. [^2]: "Effective Altruism After Sam Bankman-Fried," Seven Pillars Institute, 2023. https://www.sevenpillarsinstitute.org/effective-altruism-after-sam-bankman-fried/ [^3]: "From 500 million to 30 billion: SBF, in prison, has invested in the most valuable company in the AI era," on the Anthropic investment via Alameda. https://www.panewslab.com/en/articles/019d08f7-792c-70db-a0d3-5654dd2b2eaf [^4]: "What Happens Now to Effective Altruism, SBF's Pet Philosophy?" 2023. https://www.aol.com/happens-now-effective-altruism-sbfs-130000997.html [^5]: "Announcing the Future Fund," FTX Future Fund, February 2022, on the leadership, the 100-million-to-1-billion target, and the regranting program. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/2mx6xrDrwiEKzfgks/announcing-the-future-fund-1 [^6]: "Sam Bankman-Fried donated over $40 million in the 2022 election cycle. Where did it go?" *CBS News,* on the Democratic giving and the "dark" Republican donations. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-political-donations-2022/ [^7]: "Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in federal prison," *CNN,* March 28, 2024, on the sentence, the 11.02-billion-dollar forfeiture, and the sentencing range. https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/28/business/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-sentencing [^8]: "Effective Ventures Settles $26.8M FTX Donations Case," *The Crypto Times,* January 31, 2024, on the 26,786,503-dollar repayment to the FTX estate. https://www.cryptotimes.io/2024/01/31/effective-ventures-settles-26-8m-ftx-donations-case/