Anthropic is lining up a new slate of investors, but the AI startup has ruled out Saudi Arabia

Deep-pocketed, sovereign wealth funds are among the investors clamoring to get a stake in Anthropic, the red-hot artificial intelligence startup that’s taking on OpenAI. One country that’s being left out: Saudi Arabia.

As bankers line up a group of potential new Anthropic backers, the company has ruled out taking money from the Saudis, according to people familiar with the matter. Anthropic executives cited national security, one of the sources told CNBC. 

The stake in Anthropic is for sale because it belongs to FTX, the failed cryptocurrency exchange started by Sam Bankman-Fried, and is being unloaded as part of the company’s bankruptcy proceedings. FTX bought the shares three years ago for $500 million. The 8% stake is now worth more than $1 billion due to the recent boom in AI.

Proceeds from the sale will be used to repay FTX customers. The transaction is ongoing and is on track to wrap up in the next couple weeks, said people with knowledge of the talks who asked not to be named because the negotiations are private.

The class B shares, which don’t come with voting rights, are being sold at Anthropic’s last valuation of $18.4 billion, sources said. Anthropic has raised roughly $7 billion in the last few years from tech giants like Amazon, Alphabet and Salesforce. Its large language model competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. 

Anthropic founders Dario and Daniela Amodei have the right to challenge any potential investors, according to the sources. However, they are not involved in the current fundraising process, or in the discussions with potential investors in FTX’s stake. The founders were introduced to Bankman-Fried through “effective altruism,” a philosophy that involves making as much money as possible to give it all away.

While Anthropic’s founders told bankers they wouldn’t…