The person who brings Web3 closest to AI
Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher
On April 22, SpaceX announced a cooperation intention with the AI programming tool Cursor, acquiring the right to purchase it for $60 billion. This valuation has doubled from about $29.3 billion last November.
As soon as this news broke, a name that had gradually faded from view was once again hotly debated------SBF.
In 2022, SBF's Alameda Research invested $200,000 in Cursor's parent company Anysphere, acquiring about 5% of the shares. After the bankruptcy liquidation of FTX, this equity was disposed of at the original price. Based on the current $60 billion valuation, if held until now, it would be worth about $3 billion.
Over the past year, AI giants like Anthropic and OpenAI have seen their valuations reach new highs, and the heat in the AI sector continues to rise. In the field of AI, Cursor is just a small investment among SBF's many bets, with the largest being Anthropic.
Currently, Anthropic is in a new round of financing negotiations, with some VCs quoting valuations as high as $800 billion. In February of this year, the company just completed a round of financing at a $380 billion valuation; data from the secondary market platform Caplight shows that its circulating shares have risen to a valuation of about $688 billion.
SBF once led a $500 million investment in Anthropic's Series B round, holding about 8%. Based on the current $380 billion valuation, if this investment had not been liquidated, it would now be worth over $30 billion. However, the liquidation team sold it in batches at the time, ultimately realizing only $1.4 billion.
Time has proven that SBF may be one of the most successful AI investors in the crypto space. In 2021, before the AI boom arrived and ChatGPT was still a year away from launch, Anthropic had just spun off from OpenAI, and very few were willing to bet $500 million on this startup. At that time, Cursor was even less known.
Outside of AI, his vision was also ahead of the market: when Solana was still a niche project, he built a position at an average price of $8, peaking at a paper profit of about $2.1 billion; his approximately 7.5% stake in Robinhood is currently valued at about $10 billion; and his $100 million investment in Mysten Labs has now appreciated by over $800 million.
If the above assets have not been confiscated, their current total value may have reached several tens of billions of dollars.
SBF was the big winner of that era, with a net worth that once exceeded $16 billion, making it onto the Forbes billionaire list and being treated as a guest of honor by Washington politicians.
Even as we enter 2026, there are still people repeatedly mentioning his name.
Especially in the current crypto space, an indescribable sense of loss is spreading.
Frequent hacking incidents, AAVE facing bad debt issues, $15.1 billion in funds flowing out within three and a half days, and ordinary users' assets being locked at one point; the prices of DeFi blue-chip coins like UNI, AAVE, MKR, and CRV are severely decoupled from their fundamentals. Old players lament: "This time, it's different from before."
The grand narratives have collapsed one after another------DeFi, NFTs, blockchain games... with each wave receding, all that remains is more fatigue and less trust. The narrative dividend period has visibly compressed, from two years to one year, and then to a few months, with fewer and fewer people able to benefit from the first wave.
Early opportunities are also narrowing. On one hand, on-chain data is highly transparent, and the movements of smart money can be tracked almost in real-time, with the information gap window sharply shrinking; VCs have long locked in low-priced chips, and retail investors often receive offerings at valuations several times higher during TGE. On the other hand, cases of market makers colluding with project parties to manipulate coin prices are not uncommon, and the credibility of price signals themselves is also declining.
Even the popularity of Memecoins is fading, and crypto VCs are generally turning to low-risk arbitrage, making the entire industry feel "boring."
The sense of loss in the industry is evident.
But are people really missing SBF himself?
When FTX collapsed, about 1 million creditors suffered heavy losses, and ordinary depositors' assets were wiped out overnight. SBF misappropriated customer funds and falsified balance sheets, ultimately being sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud. What he left behind was not just a wealth myth, but also countless bills of people who lost everything.
SBF was the most extreme symbol of that time, and the collapse of FTX accelerated the end of that era to some extent.
What people truly miss is that unique sense of energy------every day there were big news and breakthroughs, ordinary people had opportunities, the rules were not yet written, there were blank spaces everywhere, crypto was overshadowing AI, and VCs were still playing a whaling game, with risks and rewards coexisting, and opportunities yet to be priced everywhere.
However, that era, where most people could get a piece of the pie, has ended.
Yet, the crypto industry is far from extinction.
As the old narratives collapse, new narratives are quietly growing, especially in the intersection of AI and crypto, which is still far from being fully priced.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) recently pointed out in a Binance Square AMA that while AI is currently attracting a lot of funding and attention, this actually leaves more long-term builders for the crypto industry, and this environment is beneficial for the long-term development of the industry.
Several VC executives have also reached a consensus in their 2026 outlook: "The spray-and-pray era is over," and 2026 will be a year where "Execution, Not Hype" (execution rather than hype) determines success or failure.
Capital is shifting from chasing trends to supporting Builders with real business models, strong execution capabilities, and long-term patience.
As DWF Labs co-founder Andrei Grachev said, the market is currently in a "very boring" phase, but it has not gone extinct; as Builders or investors, there are still many things to do. Retail investors should maintain a learning mindset, not cry in the casino, and enjoy this market we chose to enter.
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