• The feds seized Anthropic shares last year from Sam Bankman-Fried's associates.
• Several months later, the government sold them for $627 million.
• If Anthropic IPO'd in November at $1.5 trillion, those shares would be worth nearly $4 billion.

Last year, the federal government made a windfall of $627 million when it sold Anthropic shares it had seized from associates of crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

If it had held on to that stake, its windfall could have been a lot bigger.

The federal government last year sold shares of Anthropic that had belonged to Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh, two co-conspirators in the FTX fraud case. The proceeds went to compensate victims of the fraud, a Justice Department spokesperson told Business Insider.

Anthropic's S-1 filing on Monday revealed how much the federal government made from the sale of those shares. The prospectus doesn't name Ellison and Singh specifically. It says the government in October 2025 sold 4,453,900 Series B shares of Anthropic that "had been forfeited by former holders in legal proceedings to which we were not a party."

The figure matches up exactly with the combined $50 million in shares that Singh and Ellison purchased for $11.2261 each in Anthropic's 2022 fundraising round, and later forfeited to the government.

The shares represent about a quarter of a percent of Anthropic today. But given the company's explosive growth, they are still worth a fortune.

Anthropic hasn't yet announced the stock price for its expected November initial public offering. At a $1.5 trillion valuation, the shares would be worth a total of about $3.94 billion. That would be six times as much as the government sold the shares for a year ago.

"One of the Justice Department's top priorities is returning forfeited funds to victims through the asset forfeiture program whenever the law allows," the DOJ spokesperson said.

The feds' stake in Anthropic

How the federal government came to own a chunk of Anthropic in the first place is a story involving a notorious fraudster and a complicated criminal forfeiture process.

Bankman-Fried participated in Anthropic's 2022 Series B fundraising round with Singh and Ellison. Singh purchased $40 million of the Series B shares, and Ellison acquired $10 million.

Singh and Ellison later pleaded guilty to crimes related to their work with Bankman-Fried and testified against him at his Manhattan federal criminal trial. The jury found Bankman-Fried guilty, and a judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison. The federal government took ownership of Singh's and Ellison's Anthropic shares by April 2025.

The US Marshals Service sold Singh's and Ellison's shares, rather than hold on to the red-hot Anthropic stock, Business Insider previously reported. The US Marshals Service Complex Assets Unit is typically tasked with dispensing shares of private companies acquired through criminal forfeiture.

Now we know that Anthropic purchased the stock from the feds in October 2025 at the price of $140.9676 per share, which is the same price Anthropic set for its Series F-1 stock in a fundraising round a month earlier.

Anthropic resold the shares to nine investors at the same $627 million total price it paid to purchase them from the federal government, so it didn't make a profit from the sale, according to the S-1 filing. It's not clear which nine investors purchased the shares originally owned by Singh and Ellison. Representatives for the US Marshals Service didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Anthropic shares owned by Ellison and Singh took a different path than the $500 million in Series B shares owned by Bankman-Fried himself. His shares ended up as part of FTX's bankruptcy estate, which sold them in 2024 to a few dozen buyers for a total of $1.3 billion.

The federal government sent the proceeds from the sale of Ellison's and Singh's shares to the FTX bankruptcy estate, the Justice Department spokesperson said. Bankruptcy court filings show that the Justice Department transferred $638 million to the bankruptcy estate in late 2025.

The money has gone to repaying creditors, including FTX customers and investors who were scammed by the former crypto wunderkind.

Update: October 26, 2026 — This story has been updated to include a comment from the Justice Department.

Correction: October 27, 2026 — The federal government transferred the proceeds of the sale of Caroline Ellison's and Nishad Singh's Anthropic shares to the FTX bankruptcy estate, according to a DOJ spokesperson. An earlier version of this story misstated whether the funds had been transferred.

In a historic turn of electoral tides, Brazil’s incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated far-right opponent Flávio Bolsonaro on Sunday (25 October,) alleviating fears that a Bolsonaro-dynasty comeback would topple the world’s fourth-largest democracy. 

Following a disastrous first-round election for Lula on 4 October, in which he narrowly lost a majority in Brazil’s national congress, the Workers’ party leader overturned predictions to become the first president to win the second round of voting after losing the first one.

First-round voting gave 47 percent for former president Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio, and his rightwing Liberal Party, whose voters mainly represent wealthy and emerging middle classes in the south of Brazil, as well as evangelical Christians, one of the largest religious groups in the country. 

Lula’s northeastern, working class, multi-racial support base only made up 45 percent of all primary votes, but climted to 51.8 percent in Sunday’s second-round of the presidential election. 

Despite setting a record in being the first Brazilian president to win four non-consecutive terms, Lula’s triumph still leaves room for possible conflict. 

Bolsonaro, whose campaign capitalised on continuing the work of his divisive father, who is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election, refused to concede defeat – leaving an open window for history to repeat itself. 

“We’ll request the annulment of these elections,” Bolsonaro told the press after votes had been counted, accusing Brazil’s Supreme Court of having “changed the rules of the game in the middle of the game,” by ordering polls to stay open for two more hours on Sunday.

What Brazil’s nationalist candidate declared as “unacceptable” was an idea initially intended to facilitate all Brazilians’ attendance at the polls, since multiple areas were reported to have been affected by public transport problems. 

Bolsonaro’s issue with the courts is another link in the chain of power-hungry promises he had made during his campaign to “re-democratise this country”.

Without guidance on what that could mean beyond his publicised desire to extend the duration of presidential terms, many voters fearfully associated his remarks with a potential coup, or with Jair Bolsonaro’s infamous liking for authoritarian rulers – including Brazil’s own 1964-1985 dictatorship.

‘Lula’s army’

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Commanders suspected of sexual violence during the largest and fastest slaughter of civilians in more than 30 years have been subjected to travel ban and asset freeze

Senior Sudanese commanders implicated in a “campaign of rape” have been targeted by the UK on the first anniversary of a mass atrocity that saw tens of thousands of civilians killed over several days.

A year after the fall of El Fasher, the British government said it had sanctioned military leaders from both sides in the country’s ongoing conflict whom it suspected of sexual violence during the siege of the city.

• Big Law has plenty of competition for its best lawyers.
• Some of the most ambitious lawyers want to work for clients in their legal departments.
• New Pirical data shows which law firms have the most alumni working in Big Tech.

Big Law has a hard time keeping its lawyers.

It's not just rival firms dangling basketball-player salaries, extra vacation, and branded merch to lure away top talent.

Big Tech is competing for those lawyers, too.

New data shared with Business Insider reveals which firms send the most lawyers to the biggest names in tech.

Pirical, a legal people-analytics company, tracked lawyers who previously worked at the 200 largest law firms by revenue in the United States and now hold legal roles at seven tech companies: Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. Pirical filtered out summer associates and interns.

Morrison Foerster and Wilson Sonsini tied for the top spot, each with 40 alumni working in legal roles across the seven companies. Both firms regularly represent tech startups and the investors backing them.

Latham & Watkins followed with 33 former lawyers. Kirkland & Ellis, the industry's revenue leader, ranked 11th with 21 former lawyers working at those companies, tied with Paul Hastings and Sidley Austin.

Pirical's analysis may have missed lawyers whose job titles fell outside its search criteria, said Craig Savitzky, its insights and content editor. He said newer companies, particularly Anthropic, are also likely undercounted because their legal teams are growing faster than public profiles are updated.

Big Law-Big Tech pipeline

For attorneys hoping to land a coveted job at a tech giant, a stint at a white-shoe law firm can be a stepping stone. They can trade billable-hour quotas for a seat closer to the business, attractive pay, and just one client to keep happy instead of dozens.

That combination makes these roles "some of the most highly desirable and sought-after positions" for law firm associates, said Casey Sullivan, a recruiter with CMW Legal Search.

There's another draw, Sullivan said. The companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence are wrestling with some of the thorniest legal questions of the day, from intellectual property to regulation.

"That's where the most interesting work is for lawyers," he said.

Not all law firms are equally effective launch pads. Pirical's Savitzky noted that the firms near the top of the list have deep ties to the tech industry, if not the deepest pockets.

Cooley brought in $2.4 billion in revenue last fiscal year, placing it 29th on The American Lawyer's ranking of top law firms by revenue. But it tied fourth on Pirical's list, with 29 alumni working at the seven tech companies, including nine at Nvidia, a longtime client.

Davis Wright Tremaine, which has represented Microsoft in antitrust and employment lawsuits, has 13 alumni working in the software giant's legal department. Fenwick, which advised Wiz and Fitbit on their sales to Google, has 13 lawyers at the search giant.

Business Insider also sliced the data another way, looking at which of the seven tech giants employ the most alumni from the top 25 firms on Pirical's list.

Big Law is effectively a feeder school for Google's legal team. The company employs 322 alumni of the top 25 law firms on Pirical's list, more than any other tech company studied.

That doesn't necessarily mean Google is the most desirable location for lawyers leaving Big Law. Savitzky said the numbers likely reflect the sheer size of Google's legal department and the decades it has had to recruit from top firms.

Members of the European Parliament are visiting Amazon logistics centres in Germany and Poland this week to investigate working conditions and the use of digital monitoring systems, reopening a dispute between the technology company, European legislators and trade unions over employee rights.

The fact-finding mission, scheduled for 26th and 27th October, will examine how Amazon organises work, measures employee productivity and uses automated systems in warehouses. MEPs will meet management, employees, works councils and trade union representatives, with particular attention to whether technological changes are affecting workers’ health and their ability to exercise employment rights.

The investigation comes as the European Commission prepares its Quality Jobs Act, which is expected to address algorithmic management, occupational safety and working conditions across the European economy. Amazon’s extensive logistics network makes the company a prominent example of the questions legislators must resolve.

MEPs enter warehouses after prolonged dispute

The delegation is led by Li Andersson, chairwoman of Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs Committee, and includes Belgian MEPs Liesbet Sommen and Estelle Ceulemans, alongside representatives from several other political groups.

According to the European trade union federation UNI Europa, MEPs will inspect facilities in Dortmund and Mönchengladbach on Monday before travelling to Poland on Tuesday.

The German visits will cover older warehouse operations and newer facilities incorporating robotics, allowing parliamentarians to compare different approaches to handling orders and managing employees. The Polish programme includes a major returns facility in the Katowice area.

The visit follows several years of strained relations between Amazon and the European Parliament.

In February 2024, Parliament withdrew permanent access badges from Amazon representatives following disagreements over the company’s participation in hearings and requests for visits to its warehouses.

Amazon disputed suggestions that it was avoiding scrutiny, maintaining that it had offered alternative arrangements for parliamentary visits during periods when its logistics operations were particularly busy.

Company executives eventually appeared before the Employment and Social Affairs Committee in January 2026, where they defended Amazon’s employment policies and workplace practices.

The controversy over digital surveillance

At the centre of the dispute is the increasingly widespread use of electronic systems to monitor productivity.

Warehouse employees commonly use handheld scanners, while automated systems can help allocate tasks, coordinate movements and identify delays in processing orders.

These technologies allow employers to manage substantial logistics operations with considerable precision. They also make it possible to collect detailed information about individual workers’ activities throughout their shifts.

Trade unions argue that such monitoring can create unreasonable performance pressure, particularly where targets are adjusted automatically or workers cannot challenge assessments generated by software.

The concerns are not confined to Amazon.

A European Commission survey examined by EU Today earlier this month found that 42 per cent of surveyed smaller and medium-sized businesses already used artificial intelligence or algorithmic management systems.

However, 49 per cent of respondents expressed distrust of automated systems making decisions about employees, illustrating the distinction between using technology to support management and delegating consequential decisions to algorithms.

Previous regulatory action

Amazon has already faced formal European regulatory scrutiny over workplace monitoring.

France’s data protection authority imposed a €32 million fine on Amazon France Logistique in December 2023, announcing the decision in January 2024. The regulator concluded that certain employee monitoring practices were excessively intrusive and breached data-protection requirements.

The investigation examined the collection and retention of detailed information from warehouse scanners, including productivity indicators and periods of inactivity.

Amazon rejected the regulator’s conclusions and subsequently appealed the decision. The penalty therefore needs to be distinguished from any final judicial determination of the dispute.

The case nevertheless demonstrates that workplace monitoring falls within existing European privacy legislation, independently of proposals for new employment rules.

EU Today has also reported on the application of European data-protection law to automated employment decisions, including the question of whether meaningful human review is available when software affects a person’s ability to work.

Amazon disputes allegations

Amazon maintains that its warehouse technology is intended to improve operational efficiency, safety and the reliability of deliveries.

In its January parliamentary testimony, the company defended its investment in employee training and insisted that workers have the right to join trade unions.

It also pointed to engagement with works councils and employee representative bodies across its European operations.

Trade unions contest the adequacy of those arrangements, particularly in Germany, where the ver.di union has repeatedly sought a collective agreement covering Amazon employees.

These competing positions will form part of the parliamentary delegation’s assessment.

Implications for EU employment legislation

The Commission’s Quality Jobs initiative addresses several questions raised by the Amazon dispute, including algorithmic management, psychosocial risks and the effectiveness of collective bargaining.

Legislators must determine how far employers should be required to disclose the operation of automated monitoring systems, how employees can contest decisions and what safeguards should apply when performance targets are generated by software.

Rules must also accommodate legitimate requirements for stock management, security and workplace safety.

The parliamentary visit will not itself establish whether Amazon has breached employment legislation. It is a fact-finding exercise intended to inform future policy discussions.

Its importance lies in giving legislators direct access to warehouse operations and employee accounts before deciding how European labour law should respond to increasingly automated workplaces.

A student movement that emerged after a deadly railway disaster has turned nearly two years of protests into an electoral victory.

Serbia’s student-led opposition has secured a decisive parliamentary victory over Aleksandar Vučić’s ruling party, according to preliminary results, ending 14 years of political dominance by the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and opening a new chapter in the country’s politics.

RELATED: Serbia’s Vucic Concedes Victory to Opposition Students Party

Vučić acknowledged the defeat on Sunday, saying initial projections indicated that the Student List would win between 135 and 140 seats, compared with about 105 for his party. The result follows nearly two years of student-led demonstrations against corruption and what protesters describe as growing authoritarianism.

The Centre for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID), a non-governmental organization, projected that the Student List would win 139 seats after 56% of ballots had been counted, against 104 for the SNS. Unofficial estimates from polling institute Ipsos put the student movement at 140 seats and Vučić’s party at 103, down 26 seats from the 2023 parliamentary election, when it secured an absolute majority.

The setback was compounded by the failure of the Socialist Party, a longtime ally of Vučić, to clear the 3% threshold for parliamentary representation. The party previously held 18 seats. Preliminary estimates also gave three seats to Serbia’s Hungarian minority party and two to the Albanian minority list.

Turnout approached 70%, the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992 and close to the record set in the 2000 parliamentary election.

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The student movement grew out of protests that began in 2024, after 16 people died when a canopy collapsed at a railway station in Novi Sad. The disaster prompted mass demonstrations across Serbia, with protesters demanding accountability over the collapse and the construction work carried out by a Chinese company following a tendering process criticized for its lack of transparency.

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, turning the demonstrations into a broader challenge to corruption and the concentration of political power. The student movement emerged as a nationwide opposition force and sustained pressure on Vučić’s government for nearly two years.

Vučić, who had led the country for 14 years, resigned as head of state in September to run for prime minister.

Celebrations and tensions in Belgrade

The preliminary results sparked celebrations across Belgrade, where thousands gathered to dance, chant slogans and set off flares and fireworks. Crowds shouted “Victory” and “Vučić is leaving” as people embraced and wept with joy.

Slavija Square, a focal point of the mass protests against the government, filled with supporters of the student movement. At Pioneers Park, between parliament and the presidential palace, hundreds of people tore down the fence surrounding the grounds and entered the public space.

The park had been closed to the public for months and periodically occupied by groups of masked Vučić supporters, who were accused of being used as a force to confront government opponents.

The celebrations underscored the scale of the political shift after more than a decade of SNS rule. Vučić had weathered previous opposition challenges, but the student movement turned sustained street protests into an electoral campaign that defeated his party.

A decentralized political movement

The Student List has presented itself as an alternative to Vučić’s centralized model of leadership. It operates through a horizontal structure and has avoided putting forward a single public face, arguing that political decisions should be made from the bottom up rather than imposed from above.

Its slate of 250 candidates includes university professors, actors and farmers, many of them little known to the wider public.

Radomir Sajcic, a University of Belgrade professor representing the movement, celebrated the result at its headquarters. “Dear Serbia, tonight the voice of the people can be heard,” he declared. “Tonight we celebrate victory; tomorrow we will build the future.”

Sajcic also described the outcome as “a victory of courage over fear, a victory of hope over indifference, a victory of faith that Serbia can and must be different.”

The movement’s platform calls for restoring the separation of powers and the autonomy of the prosecutor general’s office, as well as increasing investment in health care and education. It also pledges to tackle corruption and individual privileges to boost public revenue, while promoting technological modernization across the economy, including agriculture.

Serbia’s score in Transparency International’s corruption index has deteriorated during Vučić’s tenure. The European Union has also raised concerns about the country’s declining adherence to the rule of law.

European support and foreign policy questions

European institutions have welcomed the student movement’s victory, describing it as an opportunity to advance democratic reforms, strengthen the rule of law and combat corruption.

European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated the students and offered support for reforms and greater press freedom. Council of Europe Secretary-General Alain Berset highlighted Vučić’s acceptance of the results and his commitment to a peaceful democratic transition.

Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajić and Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar also congratulated the winners and expressed their willingness to cooperate with them.

The election could also affect Serbia’s relations with the European Union and Russia. Under Vučić, the country has pursued EU membership while maintaining close ties with the Kremlin. Serbia has been an official candidate for EU accession since 2012.

Before the vote, EU foreign policy spokesperson Christian Wigand said the bloc would monitor the election closely and stressed the need for a free, fair and transparent process.

The Student List has offered fewer details about its international priorities than about its domestic reform agenda. Available indications suggest it may maintain Serbia’s EU candidacy while continuing to oppose sanctions against Russia, although the movement has yet to clearly outline its foreign policy plans.

The student movement’s victory marks a major political turning point for Serbia after 14 years of Vučić’s dominance. Its ability to convert demands for accountability and institutional reform into a parliamentary majority has reshaped the country’s political landscape, but the incoming government’s approach to domestic reform and foreign relations remains uncertain.