The Year of the World's Richest: 2025 Tech Tycoons' Selling List Reveals New Wealth Allocation Trends

Among the world’s top billionaires, leading tech giants publicly declare their relentless pursuit of artificial intelligence technology, yet their actual actions appear more complex. In 2025, these global top wealth holders carried out an unprecedented scale of stock sell-offs, totaling over $19 billion in cashing out. This seemingly contradictory phenomenon reflects the sophisticated considerations of tech industry tycoons amid the AI boom driving stock prices higher.

From the World’s Richest Ranking to the Sell-off Phenomenon: $190 Billion Wealth Adjustment

According to Forbes’ tracking of global billionaire rankings, from January 1 to December 15, 2025, the top 20 tech billionaires by sell-off amount cashed out over $19 billion. Among them, 14 had sell-offs of at least $500 million, most of whom are regulars on the world’s richest list.

Notably, this sell-off list covers multiple wealth tiers of tech magnates. The wealthiest, Bezos and Dell, top the list, while entrepreneurs with relatively smaller fortunes but strong control in their fields also appear. This cross-wealth-class collective sell-off indicates a shared assessment of market risks across the tech industry.

The Logic of Cashing Out: Selling at Highs and Risk Management

The timing of these large-scale cash-outs involves multiple considerations. First is the classic “selling at the peak” strategy—reducing holdings when a company’s stock hits a record high. Oracle’s former CEO Safra Catz exemplifies this. After serving 11 years, she stepped down during Oracle’s AI data center boom, with stock prices soaring. She told analysts she wanted to “complete the transition while growth is strong,” effectively cashing out at the peak. Forbes estimates that since early 2025, Catz has sold Oracle stock worth over $1.9 billion, accounting for more than two-thirds of her net worth, ranking third among tech sell-offs.

The story of AI data center company CoreWeave vividly illustrates this strategy’s value. After its IPO in March 2025, Chief Business Officer Brannon Mebane, Director and investor Jack Cogen, and Chief Strategy Officer Brian Venturo quickly cashed out, realizing $473 million, $488 million, and $289 million respectively. Their decisions proved wise—since August, the stock halved, and their early large sell-offs helped them avoid the subsequent decline.

Bezos Leads the Sell-off List, Musk Chooses a Different Path

In this wealth reallocation among global billionaires, Amazon founder Bezos tops the list with $5.6 billion cashed out. Where this massive sum is going has attracted attention—reports suggest he has invested part of it into a mysterious AI startup project, Project Prometheus, which has raised over $6 billion; he is also considering investments in Blue Origin and robotics ventures within venture capital.

Contrasting with Bezos, Elon Musk and Larry Ellison, two other top global billionaires, did not appear on the sell-off list, as they adopted different liquidity strategies—pledging stocks rather than selling. This approach allows them to leverage stock appreciation while avoiding high taxes from sales, demonstrating another advanced wealth management tactic.

Michael Dell’s sell-off reflects a diversified wealth allocation philosophy. After cashing out $2.2 billion in 2025, in December he announced donating $6.25 billion to American children, establishing 25 million accounts with $250 each. This charitable plan not only contributes socially but also aids in tax planning, balancing capital and social value.

Rules and Trigger Mechanisms for Selling

Almost all these sell-offs were not impulsive decisions but pre-arranged trading plans filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission months in advance. The purpose of this rule is to prevent insider trading, but in practice, it allows billionaires to set the frequency, scale, and trigger conditions—often based on target stock prices—for automatic sales. When stock prices rise, these preset plans are often automatically triggered, creating a phenomenon of “automatic high-level sell-offs.” This explains why, amid the AI-driven stock surge in 2025, sell-offs were so frequent.

Top Tech Billionaires’ 2025 Sell-off Rankings

First Tier (Sell-offs over $20 billion):

• Jeff Bezos (Amazon): $5.6 billion
• Michael Dell (Dell): $2.2 billion
• Safra Catz (Oracle): $1.9 billion

Second Tier ($1-2 billion):

• Jensen Huang (Nvidia): $1.1 billion
• Yashli Ural (Arista Networks): $1 billion

Third Tier ($0.5-1 billion):

• Herald Chen (Applovin): $710 million
• Frank Slootman (Snowflake): $680 million
• David Baszucki (Roblox): $670 million
• Mark Zuckerberg (Meta): $640 million
• Brian Armstrong (Coinbase): $570 million
• Stephen Cohen (Palantir): $561 million
• Erik Lefkofsky (Tempus AI): $506 million
• Mark Stevens (Nvidia): $500 million
• Henry Sury (Broadcom): $500 million

Fourth Tier ($250 million–$500 million):

• Jack Cogen (CoreWeave): $490 million
• Brannon Mebane (CoreWeave): $470 million
• Reed Hastings (Netflix): $370 million
• David Dufield (Workday): $310 million
• Brian Venturo (CoreWeave): $276 million
• Shyam Sankar (Palantir): $250 million

Deeper Insights into Wealth Reallocation

This massive sell-off wave reflects a clear-eyed recognition among the top global billionaires of the tech market in 2025—despite the AI boom boosting stock prices, bubble risks are also rising. Rather than holding onto their shares, they prefer to realize gains at high points and then reinvest in emerging fields, rocket technology, AI startups, or social philanthropy.

This shift in wealth allocation not only reveals individual investment strategies but also mirrors the development stage of the entire tech ecosystem—from growth in single projects to diversified investments and industry chain extension. The rankings of the world’s richest are being continually reshaped by these savvy wealth managers.