- The FDIC sent Bloomberg an unredacted list of Silicon Valley Bank depositors by mistake.
- The list reveals that Silicon Valley Bank's biggest depositors included tech giants like Sequoia.
After Silicon Valley Bank failed in March, U.S. officials — including President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen — described its rescue as a necessary step to protect small businesses.
While many early-stage startups banked with the SVB, new documents obtained by Bloomberg show that several global tech giants with significant deposits also benefitted from the government's intervention.
Sequoia Capital, a tech firm that backs giants like Apple and Google, for instance, had $1 billion of its $85 billion in assets at SVB, according to Bloomberg. Altos Lab, Inc., a life sciences startup that's received billions from funders like Jeff Bezos, also had $680.3 million in the failed bank.
The FDIC typically insures deposits of up to $250,000. But after the SVB collapse in March, the FDIC — alongside the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve — said it would insure all deposits at the bank in an effort to protect the wider economy.
The FDIC took over SVB after its collapse and has been selling off pieces of it ever since.
Bloomberg obtained the new documents through a Freedom of Information Act request filed with the FDIC. The independent government agency accidentally turned over the documents without first redacting some key details. Bloomberg published some of those details despite requests from the agency to withhold the information, the outlet reported.