Nvidia Executives Offload Over $1bn in Stock as Shares Soar to Record Highs Amid AI Boom

Nvidia executives have sold more than $1 billion worth of stock over the past year, including a staggering $500 million in the last month alone, according to a Financial Times report citing data from VerityData.

The bulk of the sales occurred as Nvidia’s share price crossed $150, triggering pre-arranged sales by top insiders—including CEO Jensen Huang—who are cashing in on the company’s record-breaking valuation driven by unrelenting demand for AI chips.

The sales come as Nvidia briefly reclaimed its spot as the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, eclipsing both Microsoft and Apple with a market capitalization nearing $3.77 trillion.

CEO Jensen Huang Leads the Sales

Jensen Huang, the public face of Nvidia’s AI ascendancy, has accounted for the lion’s share of the insider activity. In March 2024, Huang implemented a 10b5-1 trading plan to sell up to 6 million shares of Nvidia stock, potentially netting $900 million by the end of the year. Securities filings show that Huang recently executed sales worth roughly $15 million under this arrangement.

The CEO’s net worth now stands at approximately $138 billion, placing him 11th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In 2023 alone, he sold over $700 million in Nvidia stock—also through pre-planned transactions—marking one of the largest insider cash-outs in the S&P 500.

Huang is not alone. Other top insiders, including board members Mark Stevens, Tench Coxe, Brooke Seawell, and executive Jay Puri, have also sold tens of millions of dollars in stock, collectively bringing the 12-month total above the $1 billion mark.

Stock Surge Fuels Sell-Off

The insider sales occurred against a backdrop of explosive gains in Nvidia’s stock, which is up more than 17% year-to-date and over 44% in the past three months alone. The surge is largely credited to the company’s dominance in AI hardware, particularly its data center GPUs, which have become foundational to generative AI models from companies like OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Amazon.

Despite geopolitical tensions and export restrictions imposed by the Biden administration on advanced AI chip shipments to China, Nvidia’s momentum has barely slowed. The company recently introduced its next-generation Blackwell AI chips, further solidifying its lead in the sector and dampening hopes from rivals like AMD, Intel, and custom chip projects by Microsoft and Google.

Nvidia Eyes Robotics as Next Trillion-Dollar Frontier

At its annual shareholder meeting in June, Huang pointed beyond AI, declaring robotics as Nvidia’s next “multitrillion-dollar opportunity.” The company reported $567 million in revenue from its automotive and robotics segment in the last quarter, up 72% year-over-year.

“Robotics is going to be the next AI-level disruption,” Huang said, noting that Nvidia’s chips are increasingly being adopted in autonomous driving, factory automation, and medical robotics applications.

Why Insider Sales Don’t Necessarily Spell Trouble

While $1 billion in insider selling may seem alarming, analysts note that these transactions are primarily governed by SEC Rule 10b5-1, which allows insiders to schedule stock sales in advance to avoid accusations of market manipulation. VerityData confirmed that most of the recent sales aligned with these legally established plans.

However, the timing of the sales—coinciding with Nvidia’s rally to historic highs—has not gone unnoticed. Some market watchers view it as a prudent financial move by executives aware of peak valuations, while others raise questions about future growth sustainability in a rapidly evolving AI race.

Market Remains Bullish

Despite the insider activity, Wall Street remains overwhelmingly bullish on Nvidia. Analysts continue to upgrade price targets, citing strong earnings, unparalleled dominance in AI infrastructure, and a growing software ecosystem including its CUDA platform and Omniverse simulation tools.

Investor confidence is also bolstered by Nvidia’s strategic role in shaping the future of AI development. The company is already a key supplier for frontier AI systems being developed by OpenAI’s GPT-5, Meta’s Llama 5, and Google’s Gemini series, with demand expected to stay red-hot for the foreseeable future.

Nvidia’s insider sales mark a financial windfall for its top brass, but they do not appear to dent investor enthusiasm for what many consider to be the most pivotal technology company of the AI era. As Nvidia expands beyond data centers into robotics, automotive, and next-gen computing, its position atop the tech world seems—at least for now—secure.