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 buy it for $60 billion. This valuation has doubled from about $29.3 billion last November.

Once this news broke, a name that had gradually faded from view was once again hotly discussed------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. However, in the AI field, Cursor is just a small investment among SBF's many bets, with the heaviest being Anthropic.

Currently, Anthropic is in negotiations for a new round of financing, 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% of the shares. 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, 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 an unrealized profit of about $2.1 billion; his approximately 7.5% stake in Robinhood is currently valued at about $10 billion; the $100 million invested in Mysten Labs has now appreciated to 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 exceeding $16 billion at one point, making it onto the Forbes billionaire list and being treated as a guest of honor by Washington politicians.

Even as we enter 2026, his name is still frequently mentioned.

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 in just three and a half days, and ordinary users' assets being locked; the prices of DeFi blue-chip coins like UNI, AAVE, MKR, and CRV are severely decoupled from their fundamentals. Veteran 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 now to just 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, drastically shortening the information gap; VCs have long locked in low-priced chips, and retail investors often receive offerings at valuations dozens of 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 declining.

Even the heat of Memecoins is fading, and crypto VCs are generally shifting towards low-risk arbitrage, making the entire industry seem "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 saw their assets vanish overnight. SBF misappropriated customer funds and falsified balance sheets, ultimately being sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud. He left behind not just a wealth myth but also countless bills for 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 brought big news and breakthroughs, ordinary people had opportunities, the rules were still being written, there were blank spaces everywhere, the crypto wave overshadowed AI, and VCs were still playing a whale-hunting 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 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 the outcome.

Capital is shifting from chasing trends to supporting Builders with real business models, strong execution, 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 moved towards extinction; as Builders or investors, there is still much to be done. Retail investors should maintain a learning mindset, avoid crying in the casino, and enjoy this market we chose to enter.