Photo by Patrick Goh/The Edge

(July 4): Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang unloaded shares worth nearly US$169 million (RM796.24 million) in June, the most he has netted in a single month, as insatiable demand for the chips used to power artificial intelligence (AI) drove the stock to fresh peaks.

The sale of 1.3 million shares, his first of the year, came during a month when Nvidia’s market value rose above US$3 trillion for the first time. That briefly made it the world’s most valuable company, and pushed Huang, 61, into the rarefied group of ultra-rich with fortunes above US$100 billion.

The series of transactions were executed under a 10b5-1 trading plan adopted in March, according to the filings. Nvidia declined to comment.

Nvidia’s dominant share of the market for high-end accelerators has made it one of the the biggest beneficiaries of the AI craze. Due to the stock’s more than 150% gain since the start of the year, Huang’s net worth has more than doubled — rising US$63.7 billion — in the last six months. The co-founder of the company is now ranked 13th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a US$107.7 billion fortune.

He’s not the only insider selling. Company executives and directors unloaded more than US$700 million of shares in the first half of this year, a dollar amount that dwarfs any other period in company history.

Another beneficiary of Nvidia’s stock surge has been Huang’s personal foundation. The Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation is sitting on an estimated war chest of more than US$8 billion based on the 69 million shares it held at the end of 2022, according to its most recent tax filings. So far, most of Huang’s personal giving has been to a donor-advised fund run by Schwab Charitable.

Huang has cashed out nearly US$1.1 billion in shares since the start of 2020, including June’s sales. Additional filings showed that he plans to continue selling in July.

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