Your equity payday at an initial public offering (IPO) is mostly a tax bill. One filing this month put a 47.7% number on it.

Oura, the smart-ring maker, told US regulators what its listing would raise for the company. Of that $532.6 million, about $526.4 million was set aside to pay the tax owed on its workers’ restricted stock units (RSUs) [1]. That is 98.8% of the primary proceeds. Four days later, Oura called the listing off [2].

The big picture:

Oura’s RSUs carry two conditions. The time condition is already met for most of them. The second is the listing itself, so the shares settle only if the company actually goes public [1].

I keep coming back to one number. The company said 25,488,554 shares would settle with the listing [1]. It planned to hold back 12,150,103 of them for tax and hand 13,338,451 to the people who earned them [1]. It also booked about $160.0 million of stock pay on the settlement [1].

A worker’s first taste of liquidity and their largest tax bill arrive together. There is no version where they get the shares without the withholding. There is no version where they sell into it either, because the shares land behind a lock-up period [1].

Most of the deal was other people’s stock. Of the 50,000,000 shares on offer, 36,500,000 belonged to existing holders, who keep that cash [1]. The other 13,500,000 were the company’s own. That smaller slice raised $532.6 million net, and $526.4 million of it was the workers’ tax [1].

One clause in the plan is worth reading twice. On a firing without cause, 25% of the RSUs that had already met the time condition were erased for no money.

The other 75% waited on a performance condition. That rule applied right up to the listing. The filing says it stops applying to outstanding awards once the shares are sold [1].

Then the event itself became optional. Oura had finished the roadshow it ran to pitch investors.

A source told Fortune the order book was about five times oversubscribed, meaning demand far outran the shares on offer. The company still pulled the deal hours before pricing on September 29 [3][4]. Holtec Nuclear had shelved its own listing the day before it was to price [8]. Bamboo Insurance and Amaero followed later in the month. Firmus scrapped what would have been Australia’s second-largest listing on October 9 [3].

The queue behind them is not obviously readier. Morgan Stanley at Work asked more than 150 private-company executives and decision makers about liquidity.

In that survey, 88% feel pressure to run an event. Another 47% expect their next one to be a tender offer, a company-run offer to buy shares back at a set price [6]. Only 26% feel sure of their own readiness. The same report has companies guessing that 37% of their staff do not grasp the tax side of a liquidity decision [6]. A further 41% cannot tie the event to a financial plan.

Anthropic is next in line. The prospectus seen by Reuters shows revenue that grew 12-fold in 2025 to nearly $4.6 billion. It also shows a net loss of $42 billion. The sale could value the company at more than $2 trillion, and it now looks pushed past the November US midterm elections [7].

By the numbers

  • $526.4 million — The workers’ share: The slice Oura set aside from an estimated $532.6 million of net proceeds to cover the tax on its RSU settlement [1].
  • 12,150,103 — Shares held back: Shares held for tax against 13,338,451 delivered, from 25,488,554 RSUs settling with the listing at an assumed 47.7% rate [1].
  • 36,500,000 — Existing holder split: The shares sold by existing holders out of 50,000,000 on offer, cash the company never sees [1].
  • 26% — Readiness confidence: The share of surveyed private firms that feel sure about running a liquidity event, against 88% who feel the pressure to hold one [6].

What I’d watch:

The part I keep circling is that the tax rate is a guess, and the filing says so. Oura calls 47.7% an estimated blended rate for every RSU settling at the listing. It then warns the figure and the shares held back may differ from real results, as the price and the forfeitures move [1]. In the United States, employers hold back a flat 22% of supplemental wages, the tax bucket an RSU settlement falls in [10]. The rate is 37% above $1 million of those wages in a year.

  • The settlement mechanic: A company can net shares, sell to cover, or let a worker keep the whole grant. The choice decides what a worker takes home [1].
  • The primary-secondary split: Who is selling says more than the price range. Three of every four shares Oura offered belonged to existing holders [1].
  • Shifting forfeiture terms: The clause erasing 25% of time-vested RSUs on a without-cause exit stopped applying once shares sold [1]. The same plan can treat a leaver better after a listing than before it.
  • The planned schedule: Oura’s book was heavily covered and the deal still died in an evening [3][4]. Four other listings went the same way in the same month [3][8]. Anthropic’s far larger sale has already slipped past the midterms [7].
  • The tranche calendar: SpaceX’s next unlock covers up to 328.4 million shares on October 24 [9]. Up to 1.3 billion become eligible after third-quarter results, and about 40% of the float — the shares open to trade — could be tradeable by early December.

The catch

My read is that the tax rate is not the scandal here. Withholding is a prepayment. The shares held back are shares a worker never had to fund from their own cash. A 47.7% haircut on paper is still a large gain on a strike price of nothing.

The part that bites is timing. The bill lands on a vest that cannot be sold, sized by a guess nobody can check until the price is set. The whole thing then hangs on an event the company can cancel at the last hour [1][3].

Two things could change this read. A second Oura filing at a different price would re-cut the withholding math. A public Anthropic prospectus would show whether its RSUs settle another way.

I could be wrong that withholding is the right comparison at all. A worker weighing an offer is really trading a liquid dollar for a locked one. A lock-up that runs past a tax due date is a cash-flow problem, not a rate problem.

At a glance

  • The Big Shift: Oura’s filing showed that 98.8% of the $532.6 million its listing would raise for the company, about $526.4 million, was set aside for tax owed on workers’ RSUs at an assumed 47.7% rate [1]. Four days later the listing was postponed [2][4].
  • Why It Matters: At a liquidity event, a worker’s first payday and their largest tax bill are one transaction [1][3]. The amount kept turns on a settlement mechanic the company picks, not on the headline valuation. The event itself is optional: Oura, Holtec, Bamboo, Amaero and Firmus all pulled listings inside one month [3][8].
  • What I’d Watch: What the next filings say about the settlement itself, and whether workers get a mechanic they can plan around.
  • The withholding assumption: The rate a company picks for its RSU settlement, which Oura put at 47.7% and called an estimate that may not match real results [1].
  • The primary-secondary split: How much of a listing is the company raising and how much is existing holders selling, since the company never sees the second kind of cash [1].
  • The readiness gap: Only 26% of surveyed private firms feel sure about their own liquidity readiness, while 88% feel pressure to run an event [6].
  • The Catch: The 47.7% is the company’s own estimate, and the $526.4 million was planned but never paid, because the listing did not happen [1][3]. Withholding is a prepayment rather than a loss. The real bite is that the bill falls due on shares a worker cannot yet sell.

Related reading

Sources

[1] Oura Inc., Form S-1/A (Amendment No. 1), filed with the SEC 2026-09-21 — https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2133022/000119312526396051/d119865ds1a.htm [2] Reuters, “Oura becomes latest US IPO hopeful to delay listing as market jitters grow”, 2026-09-29 — https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/oura-delays-us-ipo-adding-fall-market-jitters-2026-09-29 [3] Reuters, “High-profile IPO listings that fell victim to market jitters in 2026”, 2026-10-09 — https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/high-profile-ipo-listings-that-fell-victim-market-jitters-2026-2026-10-09 [4] Fortune, “Why Oura really pulled its IPO”, 2026-10-06 — https://fortune.com/2026/10/06/why-did-oura-pull-its-ipo [5] BBC News, “Oura pulls $15bn stock market listing days after announcement”, 2026-09-29 — https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwyz5v190qwo [6] Morgan Stanley at Work, 2026 Liquidity Trends Report, survey of more than 150 private-company decision makers — https://www.morganstanley.com/atwork/articles/liquidity-trends-report [7] Reuters, “Anthropic’s IPO prospectus shows sweeping AI vision, surging costs”, 2026-09-28 — https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/anthropics-ipo-prospectus-shows-sweeping-ai-vision-surging-costs-2026-09-28 [8] Reuters, “Holtec Nuclear shelves US IPO as AI trade hits turbulence”, 2026-09-16 — https://www.reuters.com/business/holtec-nuclear-suspends-us-ipo-plan-bloomberg-news-reports-2026-09-16 [9] The Motley Fool, “SpaceX Stock Has Climbed About 50% Through 6 Insider Share Unlocks. The Biggest Is Still Ahead.”, 2026-10-13 — https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/10/13/spacex-stock-has-climbed-about-50-through-6-insider-share-unlocks-the-biggest-is-still-ahead [10] IRS Publication 15 (Circular E), Employer’s Tax Guide — https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15