CoreWeave is up more than 150% since it went public last March. That's one of the best runs of any AI stock.
Over that same stretch, its founders have sold more than $2.3 billion of their own shares.
Three co-founders made most of the sales. They are CEO Michael Intrator, Brannin McBee, and Brian Venturo.
Venturo is the chief strategy officer. He has sold over $1.1 billion in shares since the lockup ended in August.
The lockup is the window after an IPO when insiders can't sell. Once it lifted, the founders cut their combined stake by nearly a quarter.
They still own about 18% of the firm. So they kept plenty of skin in the game.
Intrator is still the largest shareholder. He holds about 10.4% of the stock.
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The sales were made through 10b5-1 plans. Those let bosses set stock sales far in advance.
That setup helps show they're not trading on inside news. One analyst, Paul Meeks, called the selling "obviously bad optics."
But he said it isn't as big a deal as people think. He still rates the stock cheap, with a target about 50% above today's price.
The founders aren't the only ones selling. A big early backer, Magnetar Financial, has sold more than $5.5 billion in shares since the lockup lifted.
That backer now owns under 10% of the firm. Big insider sales tend to draw eyes, even when they're planned.
The selling isn't the only thing on investors' minds. CoreWeave rents out Nvidia chips by the hour from nearly 50 data centers.
Its customers include Microsoft and OpenAI. But building all that has been costly.
The firm's total debt was near $25 billion in the first quarter. About a quarter of its sales goes to interest.
It also hasn't turned a profit yet. That makes the heavy debt harder to ignore.
The debt grew as the firm raced to build. Each new data center costs a lot up front.
CoreWeave started in 2017 as a crypto miner. It later switched to renting out AI chips.
There's another odd part. Nvidia is both a big investor in CoreWeave and its main chip supplier.
Nvidia even agreed to buy $6.3 billion of cloud service from the firm. Critics call deals like this circular.
Investors also cooled after a soft outlook for the second quarter. The stock is down about 6% since then.
Even the finance chief sold some shares. He cut his own stake by about a fifth.
Still, the business is growing fast. Sales in the first quarter more than doubled from a year earlier.
The founder selling is legal and planned. The debt load is the number that will decide if the stock keeps climbing.
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