Some are using the cash to build new AI companies, while others are cashing in on AI hype while they can.
In September, billionaire Oracle CEO Safra Catz, 64, announced that she would be stepping down and moving into an advisory role after 11 years at the tech giant’s helm. Oracle was having a banner year as its share price hit record highs on projections of a shock and awe AI data center buildout.
“You want to make a transition like this when things are great,” Catz told analysts at the time. Catz didn’t just transition on the high; she cashed out on it, too. Since January 1, she has sold $1.9 billion worth of Oracle stock, or more than two-thirds of her net worth—the third-most of any technology billionaire, per Forbes estimates, and the largest sale by percentage of net worth by far.
She’s not alone. With public markets still running high on AI hype, and growing fears of a bubble, many billionaires cashed out big this year. Forbes reviewed the stock sales of the 198 American tech tycoons on our billionaires list, tallying up 2025 stock sales disclosed because they hold an executive position or board seat or large percentage of ownership.
We didn’t count shares sold solely to help pay taxes on additional equity grants, shares sold by their philanthropic vehicles, or money spent exercising stock options. Cumulatively, the top 20 share sellers have unloaded more than $19 billion in shares from January 1 to December 15 this year. Fourteen of these billionaires—including Catz, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell and Jensen Huang—have sold at least $500 million of stock each.
AI data center company CoreWeave’s chief business officer Brannin McBee, board member and investor Jack Cogen and chief strategy officer Brian Venturo have cashed out big, selling $473 million, $488 million and $289 million worth of CoreWeave shares since the company’s March IPO, respectively. Unloading some of their stake earlier this year helped them avoid much of the stock’s 50% slide since August, largely thanks to uncertainty around debt and data center delays for a company that some see as a proxy for whether the AI boom—and the spending that comes with it—lasts.
Selling isn’t just about risk management. Amazon founder Bezos, who sold the most stock of any American tech billionaire required to disclose sales, may put proceeds into more glitzy real estate, his rocket company Blue Origin, venture investments (including in robotics) and mysterious new AI startup Project Prometheus—which reportedlyalready has more than $6 billion in funding, in part from himself. In December, Dell announced a commitment to donate $6.25 billion to American children by seeding 25 million accounts with $250 each. The details and timeline are still unclear, but the big gift will certainly help offset the tax bill from his $2.2 billion in share sales.
PHOTO BY JOAN CROS/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
Nearly all of the sales happened via trading plans filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission months beforehand, per a rule designed as a defense against insider trading accusations. But billionaire stock selling often aligns with broader macroeconomic trends, since the terms of the trading plans—including how often, how much and when to sell stock—are largely up to the billionaire. For example, a billionaire could put a price target as a criterion that triggers an automatic sale, meaning that they’d likely sell shares of their company when the price is high. Thus it makes sense that some are continuing to cash out: with the higher prices (that are holding up for now) often come more stock sales.
Also, notably absent from the list are Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, and Larry Ellison, the world’s fourth-richest person. They have each pledged hundreds of millions of their shares of Tesla and Oracle, respectively, so that they can borrow against the shares without selling—and thus use the value of the shares without paying taxes on—them.
Here are the tech tycoons on Forbes’ billionaires list who sold the most stock from January 1 through December 15 this year.
1. Jeff Bezos
Net worth: $238 billion | Source of wealth: Amazon | Stock sold: $5.6 billion of Amazon
2. Michael Dell
Net worth: $143 billion | Source of wealth: Dell | Stock sold: $2.2 billion of Dell
3. Safra Catz
Net worth: $2.8 billion | Source of wealth: Oracle | Stock sold: $1.9 billion of Oracle
4. Jensen Huang
Net worth: $152 billion | Source of wealth: Nvidia | Stock sold: $1.1 billion of Nvidia
5. Jayshree Ullal
Net worth: $5.4 billion | Source of wealth: Arista Networks | Stock sold: $1 billion of Arista Networks
6. Herald Chen
Net worth: $2.4 billion | Source of wealth: Applovin | Stock sold: $710 million of Applovin
7. Frank Slootman
Net worth: $3.4 billion | Source of wealth: Snowflake | Stock sold: $680 million of Snowflake
8. David Baszucki
Net worth: $5.3 billion | Source of wealth: Roblox | Stock sold: $670 million of Roblox
9. Mark Zuckerberg
Net worth: $221 billion | Source of wealth: Meta | Stock sold: $640 million of Meta
10. Brian Armstrong
Net worth: $11.5 billion | Source of wealth: Coinbase | Stock sold: $570 million of Coinbase
11. Stephen Cohen
Net worth: $6.3 billion | Source of wealth: Palantir | Stock sold: $561 million of Palantir
12. Eric Lefkofsky
Net worth: $5.8 billion | Source of wealth: Groupon, Tempus AI | Stock sold: $506 million of Tempus
13. Mark Stevens
Net worth: $10.5 billion | Source of wealth: Nvidia | Stock sold: $500 million of Nvidia
14. Henry Samueli
Net worth: $33 billion | Source of wealth: Broadcom | Stock sold: $500 million of Broadcom
15. Jack Cogen
Net worth: $1.9 billion | Source of wealth: CoreWeave | Stock sold: $490 million of CoreWeave
16. Brannin McBee
Net worth: $2.4 billion | Source of wealth: CoreWeave | Stock sold: $470 million in CoreWeave
17. Reed Hastings
Net worth: $5.2 billion | Source of wealth: Netflix | Stock sold: $370 million of Netflix
18. David Duffield
Net worth: $13 billion | Source of wealth: Workday, PeopleSoft | Stock sold: $310 million of Workday
19. Brian Venturo
Net worth: $3.2 billion | Source of wealth: CoreWeave | Stock sold: $276 million of CoreWeave
20. Shyam Sankar
Net worth: $1.3 billion | Source of wealth: Palantir | Stock sold: $250 million of Palantir
