Anthropic weighs mandatory employee stock sales after IPO: reports

AI startup Anthropic is considering requiring rank-and-file employees to sell their stock through mandatory 10b5-1 preset trading plans after the company goes public to avoid insider-trading concerns.

As reported by The Information on Thursday, the Claude code creator and rival OpenAI are racing to go public as investor appetite for artificial intelligence (AI) fuels soaring valuations and companies compete to set the benchmark for valuing frontier AI firms.

Key Considerations:

Under the proposed plan, all Anthropic employees may be required to use 10b5-1 trading plans, which mandate stock sales according to preset schedules and are typically used only by top executives and certain finance and legal personnel.

The report said, the plans would require employees to sell shares according to preset schedules specifying ‌the timing, amount and price of stock sales.

The company is also weighing how much stock existing shareholders can sell on the first day of trading and the length of post-IPO lockup periods.

The Information report further stated that public companies typically allow most employees to sell shares during trading windows following earnings reports, while preset trading plans could allow sales outside those windows but limit employees' discretion over the timing and size of trades.

Notably, Anthropic has not made a final decision on whether it will formally implement the mandatory plans.