Sam Bankman-Fried Trial: DOJ forbids SBF from highlighting Anthropic investment in defense

1 year ago

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) wants the Court to preclude the disgraced FTX laminitis Sam Bankman-Fried from introducing grounds astir the existent worth of definite investments similar artificial quality (AI)-focused startup Anthropic.

In an Oct. 8 letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, the prosecutors said the defence mightiness privation to present the concern arsenic portion of SBF’s efforts to marque the exchange’s lawsuit whole. However, they argued that the grounds should beryllium forbidden because Judge Kaplan had antecedently ruled that “it was immaterial arsenic a substance of instrumentality whether the suspect intended to repay the misappropriated funds.”

The prosecutors added:

“Such grounds would truthful beryllium wholly irrelevant, and contiguous a important information of unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, and discarded of time. [The] preclusion of this grounds would beryllium accordant with the Court’s anterior bid granting the Government’s unopposed question successful limine to preclude the defence from making arguments astir the magnitude of assets that person been recovered done FTX’s bankruptcy for purposes of suggesting to the assemblage that victims volition beryllium made whole.”

Similarly, the prosecutors further argued that task superior investments are unreliable since they are usually highly speculative, citing however FTX secured “venture investments astatine valuations of astir $18 cardinal successful 2021 and astir $32 cardinal successful 2022, and yet contiguous its shares are worthy nothing.”

Last year, the SBF-led crypto empire invested $500 cardinal successful Anthropic. Since then, the institution has emerged arsenic 1 of the main rivals of OpenAI, the developer of the fashionable ChatGPT chatbot, with its conversational AI adjunct Claude.

Recently, the AI institution sought to secure $2 cardinal in backing from assorted investors, including tech elephantine Google. This concern tin perchance thrust the company’s valuation to $30 billion.

The FTX 2.0 Coalition, a radical representing FTX creditors, has suggested that this superior infusion could beryllium pivotal successful making the beleaguered exchange’s users whole. According to the group, FTX’s involvement successful this AI institution could scope arsenic precocious arsenic $4.5 billion.

The station Sam Bankman-Fried Trial: DOJ forbids SBF from highlighting Anthropic concern successful defense appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.

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