Amazon’s roughly $190 billion Anthropic position is being examined through another lens after Protos tied the investment to a wider network involving Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX, Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR), and effective altruism.
According to the report, Bankman-Fried not only invested in Anthropic, where Amazon now holds about $190 billion of equity exposure, but also funded an entity that later became METR. Protos described METR as an ostensibly independent evaluator with direct links to the effective altruism movement. It has provided safety assurances for AI models from Anthropic and Amazon.
METR’s predecessor took $1.25 million from FTX Foundation
Protos said METR’s predecessor received $1.25 million from FTX Foundation, Bankman-Fried’s effective altruism charity. The donation arrived in July 2022, four months before FTX went bankrupt. The article states that FTX failed because Bankman-Fried was stealing customer money.
The report says that funding helped the Alignment Research Center operate for more than a year before it was renamed METR in 2023. In 2024, METR returned the $1.25 million it had received from FTX, saying: 「we now believe that this money morally (if not legally) belongs to FTX customers or creditors.」
Protos added that METR now also receives support from Good Ventures Foundation and Coefficient Giving, which it identified as two other effective altruism entities.
FTX also invested directly in Anthropic
The article says FTX funded Anthropic directly as well. Bankman-Fried bought a $500 million Anthropic stake in April 2022 using FTX customer funds, according to Protos.
It also cited a September 16, 2026 post on X from an account named Department of War CTO that said: 「The United States will NEVER be an effective altruist country.」
Amazon disclosed the holding in its second-quarter 10-Q
Protos pointed to Amazon’s second-quarter 10-Q filing for the composition of the stake. Amazon holds about $98 billion worth of Anthropic convertible notes and roughly $92 billion in non-voting preferred stock. Together, that comes to around $190 billion.
The report adds that the value is rising as subsequent valuations move higher.
Personnel ties between Anthropic and METR are part of the report
According to Protos, METR was spun out of the Alignment Research Center, which was led by Paul Christiano. The report says Christiano was a former housemate of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. It also says Christiano hired METR CEO Beth Barnes, who has been tied to effective altruism since college.
Protos wrote that other METR staff members also share ties to the University of Oxford, which it described as a hub for the effective altruism movement.
The report also names Anthropic president Daniela Amodei, the sister of Dario Amodei. Her husband, Holden Karnofsky, is identified in the article as an Anthropic staffer who co-founded GiveWell and the organization now called Coefficient Giving, both presented in the story as part of the effective altruism network.
Questions over METR’s independence were aired publicly
Protos says David Sacks, described in the piece as a former White House AI czar appointed by Donald Trump, told Amodei to 「stop pretending METR is independent.」
The report concludes that Amazon has clear financial ties to Anthropic and to its METR safety team. It also notes that Amazon worked directly with METR: in 2025, METR piloted a review of Amazon’s own in-house frontier AI model.
The central point of the Protos report is that Amazon’s enormous Anthropic stake can be traced through a chain of relationships linking the company to Bankman-Fried, FTX, METR, and effective altruism.