51 AI infrastructure and AI-exposed technology companies · Prices through the Oct. 20, 2026 close
Ten insiders at seven of the 51 AI companies we reviewed have pledged shares worth about $71 billion as collateral for loans. SEC rules require companies to disclose how many shares insiders have pledged, not how much they borrowed or on what terms, and only Meta (META) and Broadcom (AVGO) disclose limits on the loans. If collateral for a margin loan falls short, the insider must post more or repay, or the lender can sell the stock.
Insiders have raised cash from their shares three ways:
- Sales$15.5 billion in a year. The buyer takes the price risk, and each sale is reported.
- Prepaid forwardsTen open. A dealer takes the loss below a floor price and the gain above a cap, and each contract is reported.
- Pledge loans$71 billion of stock pledged. The insider keeps all the price risk, and the loan amount isn’t disclosed.
On October 20, Citadel’s Ken Griffin said there are “almost certainly” bubbles in AI. With a margin loan, if the stock keeps falling, the lender, not the insider, can decide when pledged shares are sold. In October 2008, lenders’ demands for more collateral, known as margin calls, forced Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon to sell substantially all of his shares, 31.5 million for $569 million, in three days.
The CEO of Applied Digital (APLD) has the same kind of loan. Under the JPMorgan margin-line form he filed in July, the bank can sell pledged shares without notice if collateral runs short. The amount borrowed isn’t disclosed, and the stock is 37% lower than when the line was signed.
Even a forward, which has no margin call, has coincided with a sharp drop: Hut 8 (HUT) fell 7.3% on September 30, the day after a director filed notice of a proposed sale under a prepaid forward. Volume was nearly three times the previous day’s, and similar companies fell a median of about 2.6%.
In this review: Off the highs · How they work · Pledges · Forwards · Insider sales · Control · Pay · Reporting controls · Flags · What it means · What to watch
1. The typical stock is 38% off its high, and AI hosts have lost half their value in a year
At the October 20 close, the 11 AI cloud and hosting companies, mostly former bitcoin miners now leasing data centers to AI customers, were a median 59% below their 52-week highs. Among the five largest AI spenders, Oracle (ORCL) was 54% below its high and Microsoft (MSFT) just 2%.
Over 12 months, the median chip or hardware maker returned 98%, against 16% for the S&P 500; the median AI host lost 51%. The run-up gave insiders stock to sell, hedge and borrow against. The fall tests the loans.
2. How forwards and pledge loans work
A prepaid forward trades the stock’s extremes for cash now: the dealer takes the loss below a floor price and the gain above a cap, and the insider keeps the risk in between. A pledge loan leaves all of the price risk with the insider; if the stock falls far enough, the insider must post more collateral or repay, or the lender can sell.
- Prepaid forwardsCash now; shares, or their cash value, delivered at maturity. Most Forms 4, the reports of insider trades, give the floor, cap and maturity.
- Margin calls on forwardsNone where terms are filed, because the shares under contract already cover the most the insider can owe. The two at TeraWulf (WULF) add a loan, on terms not public.
- Pledge loansCash now, shares kept. If the price falls or the loan defaults, the lender can call for collateral or sell.
3. Ten insiders pledged $71 billion of stock, and only Ellison’s block is big next to trading
Seven of the ten are a founder, CEO or chair. What the proxies say about the loans:
- Oracle (ORCL)Personal term loans for outside ventures, none in margin accounts.
- Meta (META)Up to 20% of Zuckerberg’s shares; loans capped at 5% of his whole stake’s value when made.
- Broadcom (AVGO)Up to 25% of Samueli’s shares; loans capped at 12.5% of his stake’s value when the pledge was made.
- Palantir (PLTR)Thiel, Karp and Moore: “personal debt arrangements.” No amounts or caps.
- Applied Digital (APLD)A JPMorgan margin line signed in July 2026; its form is in a July 13D/A.
- TeraWulf (WULF)Prager’s “financing arrangements.” No amounts or caps.
- Equinix (EQIX)Two insiders; each pledge approved by the board’s compensation committee.
Larry Ellison’s 413 million pledged shares, worth about $54 billion and 36% of his holding, make up most of the $71 billion. Selling them all would take about 14 days of Oracle’s entire average trading volume over the past three months. He has added 67 million in a year. Oracle’s governance committee says the pledge poses no material risk to holders, and its board says he can repay without the shares. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 20 that Ellison has also pledged Tesla and SpaceX stock; the amount borrowed isn’t public.
Among the rest, Applied Digital’s block comes closest, at almost a full day’s trading. It is 5.8% of the company, second only to Ellison’s 14% of Oracle. Cummins Family Limited Partnership, which CEO and chairman Wes Cummins controls, has pledged 17.6 million shares, 75% of his holding, for a JPMorgan margin line. They were worth about $340 million at the October 20 close, down from $873 million at the 52-week high.
Applied Digital’s proxy summarizes its policy as barring pledges; the full policy, filed with its 10-K, allows them with the compliance officer’s pre-approval. Documents at Oklo (OKLO) and Ciena (CIEN) read the same way; neither reports pledged shares.
Applied Digital also owns about 10% of Base Electron, a power producer that Cummins runs and partly owns with other Applied Digital officers and directors and outside investors. Applied Digital lends to it, with $59.2 million outstanding on September 1, and paid $37 million to end a guarantee of a Base Electron construction contract, for which it had received Base Electron shares. A committee of two independent directors reviews those dealings.
A third of Cummins’s 2026 performance award, worth $122 million at grant, pays at each of $50, $75 and $100 a share, on a 90-day average within five years; the stock closed at $19.33. On October 16 he bought $1 million of stock in the open market, and President Jason Zhang bought $5.7 million.
Cummins’s July 13D/A, an amended ownership report, includes JPMorgan’s form agreement for the line, signed July 7. If collateral runs short, the borrower must post other collateral or repay by a deadline the bank sets; more Applied Digital shares don’t count. The bank can also sell the pledged shares without notice, and the shares count for nothing as collateral below a trigger price the public form leaves blank. Cummins, Lance Joffre Cummins, Nicholas Mark Cummins and two companies guarantee the line. The amount drawn isn’t disclosed.
4. Ten forwards are open, and below its floor an insider stops losing as the stock falls
On September 29, Springtide Creek, a company owned by Michael Ho, Hut 8’s strategy chief and a director, signed a prepaid forward on 1.5 million shares and received $58.3 million up front, about 42% of their $139 million value on his Form 144, a notice of a proposed sale. If the stock is below $40 in May 2027, he delivers all 1.5 million, so he bears the fall from about $93, the price on that notice, to $40 and none below it. Hut 8’s policy allows such contracts with the board’s prior approval.
The Form 144 came after the close on September 29. The next day, before the Form 4, CEO Asher Genoot wrote on X that Ho “did not sell 1.5M shares in the open market” and “has not sold any shares since we started the company.” He described a loan against part of Ho’s holdings with a “costless collar,” taken in part “to fund taxes associated with future equity vesting.” The Form 4, filed after the close, reports it as a prepaid variable forward, which works the same way.
AppLovin (APP) director Eduardo Vivas received $131 million in May 2025 on up to 550,000 shares. His floor, $261.94, is 4% below the October 20 close; below it at settlement in May 2027, he delivers all 550,000. Over the past year he also sold about $255 million of stock in the open market, $157 million under preset plans, and still held about 6.8 million shares after his last reported sale in June.
At TeraWulf, CEO Paul Prager’s company entered a forward and loan facility on up to 3 million shares on September 22, and Nazar Khan, the chief technology officer, extended one on 350,000. Their Forms 4 give no floor prices or loan terms.
At Cipher (CIFR), entities tied to its largest holder, Bitfury, received about $468 million from six forwards. The first installments of the two oldest contracts settled in September and October at 17% and 26% below their floors of about $21, and every share due went to the dealers. At the October 20 close of $8.88, all of the group’s roughly 22 million shares still under contract are 58% to 64% below their floors, against the 61 million it reported holding in Cipher’s proxy. The Bitfury group also sold about 7.5 million shares in the open market in October 2025 and June 2026.
5. Insiders sold $15.5 billion of stock in a year, mostly under preset plans
Officers and directors at 49 of the 51 companies sold stock in the open market, at least 74% of it under preset trading plans. All seven companies where insiders sold 1% or more of the shares have listed since 2020.
At CoreWeave (CRWV), insiders sold $2.9 billion, about 90% of it under preset plans; Magnetar, a large holder, sold about $3 billion more. At Oklo, co-founders Jacob and Caroline DeWitte, who are married, sold more than $190 million together, 97% of it under preset plans. C3.ai (AI) founder Thomas Siebel sold $70 million.
Eight insiders at seven companies bought more than $1 million of stock in the open market. The largest buyers were a Micron (MU) director, at $7.8 million, and Applied Digital’s president, at $5.7 million.
6. Insiders hold more than half the vote at six companies, and close to half at four more
At most of these companies, insiders hold shares with extra votes, so their share of the vote exceeds their share of the stock. Dell (DELL), AppLovin and Meta say they are “controlled companies” under exchange rules, which lets them skip some board-independence requirements, though all three keep majority-independent boards. The figures for CoreWeave and SoundHound (SOUN) add up separate officers and directors: CoreWeave’s voting agreement ended at its listing, and CEO Michael Intrator alone has 38.7%. The three founders of Palantir (PLTR) hold 49.999999% of the vote under its charter.
A single holder with 49% loses a majority-of-votes-cast vote only if about 96% of all other shares are voted against it. At least 15 boards are elected in staggered classes, so holders can replace only part of the board each year.
7. Six companies tied special CEO awards to the share price, and pay votes failed five times
Nineteen companies made special awards, one-time or unusually large, to a CEO or founder in the past three years. At six, part pays out only if the stock price or market value hits set targets.
Genoot’s one-time award was valued at $231 million, $113 million of it tied to Hut 8’s market value or its American Bitcoin (ABTC) stake; measurement starts in November. Hut 8’s say on pay, the advisory vote on executive pay, got 54.8% support in June.
Say on pay failed at MARA Holdings (MARA), with 21.6% support in 2025; Snowflake (SNOW), with 30.2% and 43.6%; Riot (RIOT), with 31.5%; and Core Scientific (CORZ), with 38.3%. Twelve companies had a result under 70% at least once since 2024.
8. Four companies report controls that are not effective
Each said in its latest 10-K or 10-Q that its disclosure controls were not effective because of material weaknesses: gaps that could let a significant error in the financial statements go uncaught.
- CoreWeave (CRWV)IT controls, segregation of duties and accounting staff; reported since its 2025 listing. June 10-Q
- Super Micro (SMCI)
- Core Scientific (CORZ)Said in March that 18 months of statements should no longer be relied on. Restated 2024 10-K
- SoundHound (SOUN)Its control environment and complex transactions. June 10-Q
9. The flags cluster at AI hosts and AI software makers
We checked every company for seven facts from the sections above. The grid is a description, not a score. Without the stock-drop flag, Applied Digital, CoreWeave, TeraWulf and Hut 8 still have three. Oracle, with the largest pledge, has two.
What it means for shareholders
Insiders at these 51 companies turned the AI rally into cash three ways: $15.5 billion of sales, ten prepaid forwards and $71 billion of stock pledged for loans. Only the pledgers kept all of the price risk.
The pledges are the part shareholders can’t size. Proxies give the collateral, not the loans, and only Meta and Broadcom disclose limits on the borrowing. Two blocks are large next to their companies: Ellison’s, at 14% of Oracle, and Cummins’s, at 5.8% of Applied Digital. Ellison’s block secures personal term loans, none in margin accounts. Under the form of Applied Digital’s JPMorgan line, the bank decides when to sell, without notice, and more Applied Digital shares can’t cure a shortfall. If AI stocks keep falling, the missing loan figures matter most for those two blocks.
A lower price also changes what insiders have at stake. Below a forward’s floor, the insider stops losing on the contracted shares; the Bitfury group’s 22 million Cipher shares under contract are there now. Applied Digital’s CEO needs the stock to reach about 2.6 times its current price before the first third of his award pays. He bought $1 million of stock on October 16.
Insider control, pay votes under 70% and ineffective reporting controls cluster at the same AI hosts and software makers.
What to watch
Each of these will show up in a filing:
- Cipher (CIFR)Installments settle Oct. 23 to Dec. 7, the rest April to July 2027. Share deliveries shrink the Bitfury group’s stake.
- Hut 8 (HUT)Genoot’s price-linked award starts measuring in November. Ho’s forward, 73% above its floor, matures in May 2027.
- AppLovin (APP)Vivas’s forward settles in May 2027, with the stock just 4% above its floor.
- Oracle (ORCL)Ellison’s pledge in the next proxy. It rose from 346 million to 413 million shares in the last one.
- Applied Digital (APLD)A 13D/A, due within two business days of a change of 1% or more in his holding, or a Form 4 showing pledged shares sold. The amount borrowed may never be disclosed. The Base Electron loan in the next 10-Q.
- TeraWulf (WULF)Whether the next proxy gives terms for Prager’s September forward and loan facility.
- Reporting controlsWhether CoreWeave, Super Micro, Core Scientific and SoundHound report weaknesses fixed in their next 10-Qs.
Sources: company SEC filings and Boardroom Alpha data as of October 21, 2026; prices to the October 20 close. The group: 51 US-listed companies worth $1 billion or more whose business depends on AI spending, excluding foreign private issuers, whose insiders don’t file Forms 4. Boardroom Alpha is an independent research and analytics company and does not invest. This review is for information only and is not investment advice.