• Seed Funding Backing. In 2022, Connor Leahy co-founded Conjecture, a London-based startup dedicated to scaling AI alignment research. Sam Bankman-Fried participated as an early angel investor alongside other notable tech figures such as Andrej Karpathy, Nat Friedman, and Patrick and John Collison.

• Company Trajectory. Leahy served as Conjecture's CEO until March 2026. He subsequently shut down the company after concluding that technical AI alignment would not be solved in time to prevent catastrophic outcomes, shifting his focus to policy advocacy as the US Executive Director of the nonprofit ControlAI.

Overlapping Ideological Circles

• Effective Altruism and AI Risk. Before the November 2022 collapse of FTX, Bankman-Fried was one of the largest financial backers of the Effective Altruism movement. A core priority of EA is "longtermism," which identifies unchecked artificial superintelligence as a primary existential threat to humanity.

• Divergent Paths. Following the bankruptcy of FTX, Bankman-Fried was convicted of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. Meanwhile, Leahy became one of the most vocal advocates for an international ban on the development of superintelligent AI, frequently warning lawmakers and media outlets that autonomous AI systems pose a severe national security and extinction risk.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5922089&forum_id=2#50255340)