Billionaire entrepreneur Jensen Huang sells hundreds of thousands of shares of his company, Nvidia, almost every day.
Hwang’s divestiture strategy, implemented in the early spring, has helped the CEO avoid too much of a hit now that the value of his chip-making company has begun to fall.
For example, in late June, Nvidia’s stock was a Wall Street darling, valued at around $124 per share.
In July, shares soared to a near all-time high of $134.91, but began to decline later that month. Nvidia shares are now trading at around $100, a level last reached in May of this year.
But Hwang’s portfolio strategy meant that he began selling shares periodically, in 120,000-share increments, when the company’s share price was high.
In July alone, Huang sold approximately $323 million in Nvidia stock, nearly $361 million if the first week of August is included.
Hwang also sold another 120,000 shares as per his usual routine on the day Nvidia’s stock price hit an all-time high of $135.58 in June, bringing the total market value of his sales to $16.08 million, according to SEC filings reviewed by Fortune.
But in roughly 25 SEC filings reviewed by Fortune from early July through press time, the price for the 120,000 shares ranged from $11.98 million to $16.09 million.
From July through the time of writing, Huang’s average daily sales were $14.44 million.
Fortune reached out to Nvidia for comment, but the company declined to comment.
The world’s richest people lost $134 billion
While Hwang’s timing was fortunate in some ways, it was planned well before Nvidia’s stock price volatility.
According to a regulatory filing reviewed by Fortune, Hwang signed a Rule 10b5-1 deal agreement on March 14 giving him until March 31, 2025 to sell.
The arrangement means that executives like Hwang, and other company insiders, can buy and sell their company’s stock on a predetermined schedule without violating insider trading laws.
Huang wasn’t the only Nvidia executive to acknowledge the Rule 10b5-1 deal in the company’s April filing.
Deborah Shoquist, executive vice president of operations, Colette M. Kress, executive vice president and CFO, and Ajay K. Puri, executive vice president of worldwide field operations, also revealed similar plans.
Hwang’s stock sales amount to millions of dollars a day, but that doesn’t mean his CEO is completely insulated from the market downturn in recent weeks.
Hwang’s net worth peaked in June, hitting $119 billion when Nvidia shares peaked, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Less than two months later, his net worth had fallen to $88.4 billion, making him the 15th richest person in the world.
Still, the bulk of Mr. Hwang’s wealth is in shares in the California-based semiconductor giant he helped build, where he still owns about 3.5%.
Some of the world’s richest people, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, now have red marks next to their names as their fortunes have all taken a hit amid market volatility.
Friday’s disappointing jobs report sent markets into turmoil, with the world’s 500 richest people losing at least $134 billion in their fortunes overnight.
The Nasdaq 100 index fell 2.4% in the final day of trading last week, causing the net worth of the world’s 10 richest people to fall by at least $1 billion, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Experts at Futurum Group, a tech industry research and consulting firm, told the Financial Times that the bear market is likely nothing to do with Nvidia’s fundamentals and is simply a withdrawal from a sector that has performed well all year.
“I think the outflow from big tech companies is because they’ve had such an incredible run-up,” CEO Daniel Neumann said. “Obviously, that’s created some room for selling.”
