After brutal job cuts, Clear Street will make some tech people very rich

If you are Matthew Cyzer or Phillip Hylander, you can be forgiven for shedding a tear today. The two men were cut along with others in July 2025 after a very brief period working for Clear Street. Today Clear Street filed for a $1.05bn IPO.

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On February 12th, Clear Street is reportedly proposing to sell 23.8bn shares for between $40 and $44 each. Today's filing reveals that 7.8 million restricted stock units were issued to employees in 2023 and 2024 respectively, at prices ranging between $5.5 and $7.4. In 2022 and 2023, employees were also given 3.7m and 5.8m of stock options at prices below $2 and $3.

Some people at Clear Street are therefore about to become very rich. The people cut last year are probably not among them.

Instead, Clear Street's coming IPO is likely to reward its senior executives and its top technology staff. That includes brothers in law and executive chairman and executive vice chairman, Uriel Cohen and Elli Ausubel. CEO Edward Tilly, who was in retirement before he joined from CBoe markets in 2024 has $71m in unvested stock.

Clear Street said today that 40% of its employees are engineers and that another 7.5% of them work in risk and control functions. It added that it's hired more than 200 engineers since 2023 and that paying them well is necessary because, "competition in the technology industry for qualified employees is intense and many of these employees hold extensive knowledge and experience in highly technical and complex areas spanning technology and capital markets, including the options, equities and futures trading and clearing industry."

Technology staff in banks, who are complaining of reduced bonuses this year, may find this energising.

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