Easy Prediction for 2026: Insider Trading Concerns

Will Anthropic go public by December 31, 2026? Most people on Polymarket think so (it costs one dollar to win 71 cents as of this writing). But we wouldn’t advise betting on it, especially if you’re an Anthropic employee.

Anthropic is considering requiring rank-and-file employees, in addition to executives, to sell stock through preset 10b5-1 trading plans once it goes public, according to multiple reports. Public companies typically let most employees trade during windows tied to earnings reports; preset plans open trading outside those windows but limit employees’ control over timing and size, a tradeoff aimed at addressing insider-trading concerns. Before Anthropic rings an opening bell, it’s also weighing how much stock existing shareholders can sell on the first day of trading and how long post-IPO lockup periods should run.

Just as Anthropic prepares to limit employee stock sales, however, a new insider-trading threat is gathering speed. It’s one that no 10b5-1 plan can reach: prediction markets.

Recent enforcement actions from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the CFTC show how seriously regulators are taking the problem of prediction market wagers based on inside corporate information. On May 27, authorities charged a Google software engineer with civil violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and criminal counts of commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. The engineer allegedly used internal Google tools to access confidential data on the company’s 2025 “Year in Search” rankings, then traded more than 20 event contracts tied to those rankings before they were public, generating roughly $1.2 million.

He has company. In April, the SDNY and CFTC brought parallel actions against an active-duty Army service member accused of using classified information to place winning Polymarket bets. Prosecutors say Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who helped plan what prosecutors described as a U.S. operation to capture Venezuelan President Maduro, made more than $400,000 from 13 wagers tied to the operation, in what was apparently the first insider trading case built around a prediction market. Polymarket responded within a week by tightening its trade monitoring. Separately, investigators are reportedly examining whether a longtime teleprompter operator for President Trump used advance knowledge of presidential speeches to place wagers on Kalshi.

Regulators are treating this as a priority. Sidley notes the CFTC has flagged the Van Dyke matter as its first use of the so-called Eddie Murphy Rule, which bars government employees and others with access to confidential government information from trading on it in futures, options, or swaps markets.

Law firms are urging clients to catch up. Davis Wright Tremaine recommends companies update their codes of conduct and confidentiality policies to define material nonpublic information broadly enough to cover event contracts, bar employees from betting on outcomes tied to their own employer, extend blackout and pre-clearance rules to prediction market platforms, and require employees in sensitive roles to disclose their accounts on these sites.

A few companies are moving. GoDaddy said in an April 24 proxy statement that its insider trading policy covers prediction markets. Seagate’s May 1 code of conduct names Polymarket and Kalshi, barring “speculative activities where Seagate is the subject.” Emcor amended its policy April 2 to prohibit prediction market trades tied to nonpublic information. Smith & Wesson goes furthest, barring any position in “any prediction market, event contract, binary option, or similar instrument” connected to the company. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America are tightening employee rules, while OpenAI and United Airlines bar only trades where inside knowledge creates an unfair advantage.

The threat goes well beyond public companies. Employees of private companies, government contractors, universities, and nonprofits may not realize that trading on confidential business or leadership information carries the same civil and criminal risks.

Which brings us back to Anthropic—still, for the moment, a private business. Its 10b5-1 plan can and will manage how its employees trade Anthropic stock after an IPO; if extended to all employees, it will likely enhance the company’s positioning as an ethical provider of AI technology and support the company’s governance and risk-management functions. But the plan will not touch an employee who trades Kalshi contracts on the timing of a model release.

As these platforms grow, confidential information about product launches, executive decisions, regulatory actions and government operations may create trading risks even when no company securities change hands.  Anthropic and other businesses seeking to address insider trading risks will need policies that cover more than stock transactions.

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