Zuckerberg and Bezos dispose of thousands of shares in their companies – Markets

The recent boom in the technology companies' stock market prompted many leaders and workers in the sector to sell their company shares. According to the Financial Timesthe trend has reached its highest levels since 2021, and among the players in the market, there are names such as Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos.

Zuckerberg has a long history of selling shares in Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. However, the market offering of securities will intensify this year, with the technology giant's share price rising.

In early February, it sold 291,000 shares for $135 million, its first major sale since November 2021. However, Zuckerberg remains Meta's majority shareholder, with 13.5% of shares outstanding. Amazon's Jeff Bezos also put 50 million shares up for sale in February, with a total value of $8.5 billion. In turn, Andy Jassy, ​​the company's CEO, has sold shares worth $21.1 million since the beginning, an amount close to the $23.6 million he sold in total in 2023 and 2022.

Finally, this month Peter Thiel sold $175 million worth of shares in the data analytics group Palantir, which he founded. This was the largest sale of the company's shares since February 2021, when it put $504.8 million worth of securities on the market.

He stresses that “the sale of large amounts of shares by high-level executives is never a good sign.” Charles Elson from the University of Delaware. “This means they have found a better place to farm their assets than the companies they run.”

Analysts believe that the boom in the technology sector, which is riding on the enthusiasm generated by the rise of generative artificial intelligence, is about to fizzle out.