Tech’s historic stock rally in 2025 turned stock into hard cash as billionaire founders and CEOs quietly sold more than $16 billion worth of shares. 

Bloomberg’s recent analysis of insider-trading data, released on Friday, shows that a small group of tech leaders were at the heart of the cash-out wave last year, led by the likes of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell. Bezos was the single biggest seller, unloading 25 million Amazon shares for about $5.7 billion. 

Oracle’s former CEO, Safra Catz, sold 12.5 million shares of the company’s stock, valued at over $2.5 billion. In third place, Michael Dell sold 16.2 million shares of his company at a total value of $2.2 billion. 

Related: Michael Dell Encourages Leaders to ‘Make a Crisis’ — Even If There Isn’t One Already. Here’s Why.

Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang saw his company become the world’s first $5 trillion business earlier this year and sold $1 billion worth of company stock along the way. Nvidia cemented its position at the center of the global AI supply chain in 2025.

Arista Networks CEO Jayshree Ullal cashed out nearly $1 billion in stock as demand for the company’s high-speed networking gear grew, and her personal net worth surpassed $6 billion. 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also sold about $945 million in stock, routed through his charitable foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora and Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt each realized more than $700 million by selling company stock. 

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Most of these transactions were not impulsive reactions to headlines, but pre-planned decisions. Executives largely sold company shares through pre-arranged 10b5-1 trading plans, filed with regulators in advance. These plans outline when and how many shares can be sold, helping avoid accusations of trading on non-public information. 

The selloff does not mean tech leaders are abandoning their companies. In fact, most still hold large stakes and remain heavily invested and exposed to future performance. However, the coordinated scale of selling highlights a desire to convert at least part of the AI-driven prosperity into hard cash while stock prices are still exceptionally high, per Bloomberg. 

Tech, especially AI-linked giants, had a historically strong stock rally in 2025. Tech companies were the primary engine behind the S&P 500’s 17% gain for 2025, its third straight year of double-digit growth. 

Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft all accounted for a disproportionate share of both index performance and insider selling. Nvidia, for example, contributed roughly one-fifth of the S&P 500’s total return in 2025. It was the single biggest driver of the index’s gains. 

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