Selling Into the AI Boom: Insider Stock Sales Across the Data-Center Trade, Q2 2026

The market's gains this spring leaned heavily on one story: the build-out of artificial intelligence and the data centers behind it. The people who run those companies spent the same months doing something quieter — selling their own shares.

Insider transactions are disclosed on SEC Form 4 within two business days of the trade. Filtering to open-market sales by named officers and directors — and setting aside the larger, mechanical unwinds by outside financial backers — a pattern shows up in one corner of the market.

The selling clustered where the AI money has been

Over the past 90 days, executives and directors at a row of AI, semiconductor and infrastructure-software companies sold shares on the open market in size. The three founders of CoreWeave (CRWV) led the group at roughly $1.57 billion combined. Behind them sat names central to the trade: Astera Labs (ALAB) at $458 million, Snowflake (SNOW) at $389 million, Broadcom (AVGO) at $271 million, and Arista Networks (ANET) at $219 million.

The names trace much of what the AI build-out runs on — connectivity (Astera Labs, Arista), power management at Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR), data and monitoring at Snowflake and Datadog (DDOG), security at CrowdStrike (CRWD) and Cloudflare (NET), the chips beneath it at Broadcom, and the ad software riding on top at AppLovin (APP). Twilio (TWLO) and Samsara (IOT) round out the group.

It wasn't one or two people

What stands out is breadth. At several of these companies the selling came from across the executive team and the board, not a single insider. Datadog saw fifteen different insiders sell over the quarter; at others, most of the C-suite and several directors took part. When that many people inside one company reach the same decision in the same window, it is at least worth noticing.

• Datadog (DDOG) — 15 insiders sold
• Cloudflare (NET) — 9
• CrowdStrike (CRWD) — 8
• Monolithic Power (MPWR) — 8
• Astera Labs (ALAB) — 7
• Snowflake (SNOW) — 7
• Samsara (IOT) — 7

A founder cashing out isn't the same as a fund unwinding

The biggest dollar amounts on the tape came from somewhere else — outside backers selling down stakes they took before these companies were public. At CoreWeave, the investment firm Magnetar sold roughly $7.9 billion over the same window. At Dell Technologies (DELL), Silver Lake sold around $1.5 billion, far more than the company's own managers did. Those are pre-IPO lockups and private-equity exits unwinding on schedule — a different thing from a chief executive deciding to sell.

It also helps to separate the companies still near their highs from those well off them. Dell has more than tripled this year, so its insiders are trimming into strength. CoreWeave trades far below its post-IPO peak, where the founders' selling looks more like monetizing a windfall than a verdict on what comes next.

Much of this runs on a schedule

A large share of insider selling moves through pre-arranged 10b5-1 plans set months ahead, so no single sale is a judgment on the days around it. The signal, if there is one, lives in the aggregate and the timing. Across the whole market, open-market insider selling was heaviest in May — the largest single month in the past year — just as the AI names were running. Whether that says more about valuations or about tax calendars is left to the reader.

Notes

Figures are drawn from SEC Form 4 open-market sales over the 90 days ending June 26, 2026, and reflect named officers and directors only. Insider activity by company is available in the insiders section.