Red light warning: Top US stock insider sellers in the first quarter include Palantir, Netflix

Key topics:Insider selling totals $16.3B, with fewer AI/tech names leading exitsRoyal Caribbean heir tops list with $549M; Thiel, Broadcom also sellCoreWeave, Nvidia and Netflix insiders cash out amid AI market fears.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Biz Carson.Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. heir Arne Alexander Wilhelmsen topped a diverse list of insider sellers in the first quarter, as a more cautious outlook for the tech industry led many of the usual suspects to hold their fire.Wilhelmsen’s family office unloaded more than half a billion dollars worth of shares in its first sale since 2024, according to the Washington Service, which tracks such buying and selling. He joined insiders at a mortgage company, a maker of airplane parts and an oilfield equipment supplier in disposing of large chunks of stock.Half of the top insider sellers in the first three months of the year were at companies benefiting from artificial intelligence, a drop from 2025 when nine of the 10 largest sellers were from from tech firms. That shift came as software stocks sold off amid fears of AI dominance, and as the Iran war sent markets into a tailspin. Peter Thiel’s sale of $290 million of Palantir Technologies Inc. shares under a pre-arranged 10b5-1 plan put him second on the list. Executives from CoreWeave Inc., Broadcom Inc. and Nvidia Corp. were also in the top 10. The quarter saw 4,419 insiders sell $16.3 billion in stock, up from 3,867 who unloaded $15.5 billion a year ago. The top 10 sellers offloaded a combined $2.3 billion, down from $3.8 billion a year earlier..Read more:.FT: ASML forecasts bumper sales on back of AI boom.Here are the top insider sellers, according to the Washington Service. The data excludes beneficial owners like capital management funds. The companies listed didn’t respond to requests for comment unless otherwise noted.1. Arne Alexander WilhelmsenDirector, Royal Caribbean CruisesTotal shares sold: 1,731,597 Total value sold: $549,611,077 Wilhelmsen is part of a Norwegian shipping dynasty and heir to a multibillion-dollar stake in Royal Caribbean. His father, Arne Wilhelmsen, joined the family shipping business in 1954 and became president in 1961. Royal Caribbean was started in the late 1960s after a trio of Norwegian shipping companies came together with the idea of building ships designed for warm weather, basing the company in Miami. Arne Alexander Wilhelmsen took over the family’s board seat in 2003. He’s also chairman of Awilhelmsen, a family-owned investment company that has expanded into oil, real estate and other industrial investments. In February, the Awilhelmsen Group sold nearly $550 million of Royal Caribbean shares in a series of transactions. It still owns more than 6% of the company. 2. Peter Thiel Chairman, Palantir Technologies Inc.Total shares sold: 2,000,000Total value sold: $289,707,507 Palantir insiders have offloaded billions of dollars since Donald Trump’s election, which boosted the software company’s stock. But Thiel’s sale in March of 2 million shares under a 10b5-1 plan was his first since 2024. It was also the venture capitalist’s first since moving to Florida in December in the face of a proposed California billionaire tax. Even with the stock sales, Thiel keeps his voting control over the company thanks to a special founder share class. Thiel could funnel some of his money into politics. After sitting out the 2024 election cycle, he has started cutting seven-figure checks again, including $3 million to defeat a proposed California billionaire tax and $1.5 million to support Club for Growth Action, a conservative public action committee.3. Henry Samueli .Chairman, Broadcom Inc.Total shares sold: 781,967 Total value sold: $250,000,302 One of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom, Palo Alto, California-based chipmaker Broadcom took in record revenue in its fiscal first quarter ended Feb. 1. Chairman and co-founder Samueli sold a $250 million position held in an LLC under a 10b5-1 plan in March and also gifted roughly $135 million in shares. Samueli owns about 2% of the company’s stock, making up the bulk of his $32.7 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. A representative for Broadcom declined to comment.4. Mat Ishbia .CEO, UWM Holdings Corp.Total shares sold: 44,018,288 Total value sold: $197,457,027 Ishbia has been a regular seller of UWM stock since June 2025 through SFS Holding Corp., which unloaded more than $560 million worth in the last 10 months using 10b5-1 plans. Bloomberg's wealth index credits Ishbia with personally controlling 75% of the shares owned by SFS, with the rest tied to his father Jeff and brother Justin. UWM’s shares sank 17% in the first quarter as rising interest rates lowered expectations for the mortgage provider. Ishbia’s $8.6 billion net worth is largely made up of his UWM holdings, his ownership of the Phoenix Suns basketball team and the proceeds of distributions SFS received from UWM . 5. Jonathan Fairbanks (on behalf of GEC Advisors LLC)Chairman, Flowco Holdings Inc.Total shares sold: 8,970,000 Total value sold: $189,939,750 Fairbanks is the managing partner of Global Energy Capital, or GEC, a Houston-based private equity firm. Through a combination of mergers, GEC helped create Flowco, a publicly traded oilfield equipment supplier that Fairbanks chairs. In March, Flowco announced a public offering of shares held by GEC affiliates, which reported the transactions under Fairbanks’ name. The secondary sale attracted demand for nearly five times its offering size, Bloomberg reported.6. Jay Puri EVP Worldwide Field Ops, Nvidia Corp.Total shares sold: 1,000,000Total value sold: $183,002,963 Puri became a billionaire after Nvidia’s 1,177% rise in the last five years propelled him into the three-comma club. A 21-year veteran of the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker, Puri oversees sales as executive vice president of worldwide field operations. The 1 million shares represent his largest sale to date of Nvidia stock. “Mr. Puri’s sales are based on a 10b5-1 plan, in which the price, amount and dates of the sales are established in advance,” a Nvidia spokesperson said. 7. Brannin McBee .Chief Development Officer, CoreWeave Inc.Total shares sold: 2,060,805 Total value sold: $173,422,847 CoreWeave insiders continued cashing out in the first quarter, after unloading over $1 billion following the end of the data center company’s post-IPO lockup period. McBee has sold more than $685 million worth of CoreWeave shares since August. Even before the IPO, McBee, who started his career as an energy and agriculture trader, had taken $150 million off the table through tender offers, according to filings. The majority of his $2.6 billion net worth remains tied up in his 4% stake in CoreWeave, shares of which are up 130% since their market debut in March of last year.8. Reed Hastings .Chairman, Netflix Inc.Total shares sold: 1,648,360 Total value sold: $151,758,137 The Netflix co-founder continued a steady pattern of sales through the first quarter even as the company’s stock saw a tumultuous start to the year. Netflix shares hit a yearly low in February as investors soured on its pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., but the stock staged a 14% single-day rally after the streamer abandoned the bid. Hastings typically sells monthly and has offloaded more than $2.5 billion of Netflix stock since 2003, according to Bloomberg calculations. That helped him buy a Utah ski resort, which is undergoing a $40 million upgrade. The 65-year-old, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, still controls a 0.5% stake in the company and has about 2 million Netflix stock options, part of his $6.8 billion fortune. (Hastings is also a board member of Bloomberg Inc.)9. Brian Venturo .Chief Strategy Officer, CoreWeave Inc.Total shares sold: 1,613,202 Total value sold: $138,211,851 Like his CoreWeave co-founders, Venturo hasn’t shied away from selling shares in the company since its IPO, with more than $500 million in disposals so far. The chief strategy officer, who used a 10b5-1 plan for some of the sales, still holds a 6% stake in the company and is worth $3.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. While CoreWeave is up from its IPO, its stock has fallen since its highs last summer. The company reported a bigger-than-expected loss in February, sending its shares down 19% over fears about increased capital expenditures.10. Kevin SteinDirector, TransDigm Group Inc.Total shares sold: 98,000 Total value sold: $138,048,502 .Read more:.Nvidia earnings hit market as AI anxiety peaks.Stein retired from airplane parts manufacturer TransDigm in September after more than seven years as CEO. During his tenure, the Cleveland-based company came under government scrutiny for its product pricing with the Pentagon asking for a refund in 2022. Stein joined in 2014 as chief operating officer and remains a director. The bulk of the sales related to the exercise of stock options set to expire between 2028 and 2030..© 2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Red light warning: Top US stock insider sellers in the first quarter include Palantir, Netflix

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