SEC's Selling Document Revealed: On the Eve of the U.S. Stock Market Crash, Executives from 9 AI Giants Cashed Out $7.4 Billion in Advance

Author: Protos Staff

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Guide: This week, Nasdaq technology stocks experienced a sharp decline in a single day, and the external market even triggered a circuit breaker. However, regulatory documents disclosed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show that months before the crash began, the executive teams of Silicon Valley's core hardware and cloud computing giants had already initiated an epic wave of sell-offs. This article is based on 282 real SEC Form 4 filings, dissecting the true profit map of billions of dollars in capital precisely exiting at high levels.

Precise Large-Scale Withdrawal on the Eve of the Crash

From May to October this year, during the period when the stock prices of nine top U.S. AI listed companies approached historical peaks, core personnel within these companies cumulatively cashed out a total of $7.4 billion.

Since November, the AI core index, which has attracted significant attention on Wall Street, has cumulatively dropped by 16%. In Thursday's severe sell-off, the market capitalization of the U.S. technology sector shrank by over $3.2 trillion in a single day. The overseas peripheral markets also suffered indiscriminate heavy blows, with the Korea Composite Stock Price Index plummeting by 8.5% and triggering a trading halt mechanism.

However, before this round of liquidity crunch occurred, the operators and executives of the AI technology empire had already safely locked in substantial profits.

Figure: Cash-out amounts and distribution details of nine U.S. AI companies from May to October

The Sell-off List Behind the Regulatory Documents

Regulatory statistics show that in the 282 SEC Form 4 insider trading reports submitted from May to October, the total cash-out amount for insiders of nine companies reached $7.39 billion (excluding $179 million used for mandatory option tax payments).

This wave of intensive sell-offs included the top decision-makers of Nvidia, Oracle, Micron Technology, Broadcom, AMD, SanDisk's parent company, CoreWeave, Arista Networks, and Astera Labs.

Among them, Nvidia's senior director Mark Stevens alone sold $407 million worth of stock in June and notified the SEC of subsequent further sell-off applications. This year, Stevens has cumulatively sold over 6 million shares of Nvidia common stock through five regulatory filings, with personal cash-out exceeding $1.3 billion.

At the same time, four other senior insiders at Nvidia also added to their sell-off with $24.5 million in stock. In Thursday's crash, Nvidia closed down 3.7%, a cumulative decline of 11.2% from previous highs.

Full-Scale High-Value Cashing Out of Silicon Valley's Star Unicorns

At Broadcom, the co-founder Henry Samueli cumulatively sold stocks worth up to $750 million within 2026, and three senior vice presidents also collectively reduced their holdings by $14 million.

In the AMD camp, seven internal executives cumulatively cashed out $262 million through 19 filings. In Thursday's crash, AMD's stock price plummeted by 17.3% to close at $404.40, a cumulative drop of 38.6% from previous historical highs. Among them, AMD CEO Lisa Su personally sold 360,000 shares, cashing out $169 million, while executive Forrest Norrod also gained $45 million.

SanDisk CEO David Goeckeler sold in two high-position filings in September, cashing out $105 million, and another five insiders also collectively cashed out $41 million.

As a leader in cloud computing power, CoreWeave, after being included in the Nasdaq 100 index, saw its internal executives cumulatively implement a reduction of up to $740 million. As of Thursday's close, CoreWeave's stock price had significantly dropped by 68% from its peak in 2026.

At Micron Technology, insiders cashed out a total of $279 million through 18 document applications, with CEO Sanjay Mehrotra contributing $182 million personally. At Oracle, Vice Chairman Jeffrey Henley led a reduction of $63.7 million.

These objective data from the bottom-level regulatory filings in the capital market indicate that while retail investors and quantitative funds blindly bet on the unlimited growth of AI computing power, the industry elites who truly understand the hardware supply chain cycle and delivery bottlenecks have already completed the certain cashing out of billions of dollars at high levels.