CoreWeave’s three co-founders have cashed out over $2.3 billion since the IPO, while institutional shareholders have sold $5.5 billion.

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AI data center operator CoreWeave's stock has surged over 150% since its IPO in March 2025, with executives and early investors collectively selling shares worth several billion dollars, drawing scrutiny from the market.

Since the lockup period ended this August, the three co-founders Michael Intrator, Brannin McBee and Brian Venturo have cashed in more than $2.3 billion, reducing their combined holdings by nearly a quarter. Magnetar Financial, one of the company’s largest institutional shareholders, has sold over $5.5 billion in shares, almost halving its position.

The large-scale sell-off has raised doubts among some market participants. Paul Meeks, Managing Director of Technology Research at Freedom Capital Markets, said the move "clearly hurts the image," adding he has repeatedly raised these concerns directly to CoreWeave executives.

The company also faces financial pressures, including total debt nearing $25 billion and has yet to achieve a single profitable quarter. Following below-expectation guidance for Q2, the stock has since fallen about 6%.

CoreWeave stated that all sales were executed according to pre-arranged 10b5-1 trading plans, and that founders "strongly believe in the company’s long-term growth and execution." Despite the scale of insider selling, Bloomberg data shows most analysts remain bullish on the stock.

Co-founders cash out over $2.3 billion, Venturo leads the sell-off

According to Washington Service, which tracks US insider trading, Chief Strategy Officer Venturo has sold over $1.1 billion since his lockup expired, ranking second among US insiders for dollar sales in 2025; Intrator ranks seventh.

The three co-founders have collectively reduced their holdings by nearly a quarter and now hold about 18% of CoreWeave’s outstanding shares. Intrator remains the largest individual shareholder with a 10.4% stake.

Chief Financial Officer Nitin Agrawal also sold $11.7 million of stock after his lockup expired, lowering his holding by 21%.

All these sales were made under 10b5-1 trading plans, which allow executives to pre-set a schedule for selling shares to avoid insider trading accusations. In an email statement, the company spokesperson said:

"Founders strongly agree with CoreWeave's long-term growth and execution. Like many founders of high-growth, listed tech companies, our executives have disclosed 10b5-1 trading plans to manage personal liquidity and diversify assets."

Magnetar nearly halves its position, early investors also exit

Magnetar Financial, one of CoreWeave’s largest investors, has also made significant sales.

Washington Service data shows the alternative asset manager has sold over $5.5 billion since the lockup expired, reducing its stake by almost half and now owning about 9.7% of CoreWeave’s outstanding shares.

Managing Partner David Snyderman told Bloomberg TV in March 2025 that Magnetar remains committed to CoreWeave. "They are now the gold standard for AI infrastructure," he said at the time.

Questionable circular transactions, heavy debt and profits still out of reach

Founded in 2017, CoreWeave started with cryptocurrency mining and accumulated large quantities of Nvidia GPUs in its early days. Now it operates nearly 50 data centers across North America and Europe, renting computing power by the hour to clients such as Microsoft and OpenAI, with a market cap of about $56 billion.

The company's business model has raised doubts among some analysts. CoreWeave has been criticized for engaging in "circular transactions," a common practice in the AI industry, where one company invests in another, which then buys products and services from the former.

Nvidia is a core participant in this arrangement: it is both one of CoreWeave’s largest investors and the chipmaker supplying CoreWeave’s computing power, and has also committed to purchasing $6.3 billion worth of cloud services from CoreWeave.

Financially, CoreWeave had total debt near $25 billion in Q1, with about a quarter of revenues going toward interest payments, and has never reported a profitable quarter. Intrator called the doubling of Q1 revenues a "transformational" milestone, but subsequent Q2 guidance fell short of expectations and the stock has dropped about 6% since.

In a Bloomberg TV interview after the Q1 earnings report last month, Intrator said:

"In some respects, it’s almost a math problem. You are building infrastructure and it takes time to go online. We are experiencing massive expansion across the company, which is why operating margins are compressed."

Sell-off hurts perceptions, but most analysts remain bullish

University of Michigan professor Nejat Seyhun, who specializes in corporate governance and insider trading, said large-scale insider sales always attract attention. "Does it get noticed? Of course. They’ve sold hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars’ worth of shares," he said. "But is it unusual? It just reflects how much stock they originally owned."

Meeks said he thinks the sell-off "clearly hurts the image," but the impact is "not as big as people are making it out to be." He still gives the stock a $151 target price, nearly 50% above current levels.

Agrawal said at a Jefferies Group conference last month when asked about future profitability that the company is confident in the business logic behind its massive expansion. "We are very comfortable with our long-term profit trajectory."

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