AI Insider Selling: Sales Hit Photronics, Credo & CoreWeave as Shares Spike

Key Points

• AI stocks Photronics, Credo, and CoreWeave have put up big-time gains in 2026.
• However, as these stocks spike, insiders are making significant sales.
• Top CoreWeave insiders continue to dump the stock, an overhang on shares.

Insiders are making moves in three soaring artificial intelligence (AI) stocks, selling millions' worth of shares. However, knowing which of these sales clearly signal negative indicators to investors and which do not requires a thorough analysis. Here’s what recent insider trades are signaling.

Phontronic’s Insider Sales Soar Alongside Shares

First up is a name that garnered significant attention near the end of 2025, Photronics NASDAQ: PLAB. Photronics sells photomasks, key components in the semiconductor manufacturing process. The stock saw an over 45% single-day spike in December. This was the result of an impressive earnings report and the announcement of significant capital expenditures, indicating strong demand going forward. Photronics has continued to soar in 2026, already up more than 50% for the year.

However, as shares move up, Photronics has also seen a fair bit of insider selling in Q2. Overall, MarketBeat has tracked $14 million worth of selling during the quarter, a big-time shift from just $3.44 million in Q1.

Notably, none of these sales came under a predetermined 10b5-1 plan, indicating that they were discretionary in nature. Furthermore, many of these sales represented a significant portion of individual insider holdings. For example, insiders Hsueh-Chun Wang and Rui Zhang each reduced their holdings by 20% or more.

Given the significant appreciation seen in Photronics shares, these sales are a moderately bearish sign for the stock. Still, most insiders continue to hold large stakes in the company, suggesting that they maintain a solid degree of confidence going forward.

Credo Insiders Sell as Shares as Hit New Highs

Next up is Credo Technology Group NASDAQ: CRDO, an AI stock that has experienced significant ups and downs over the recent past. The stock rose to nearly $190 in early December 2025, before falling to less than $100 by early March 2026. Within two months, Credo saw a significant recovery, rising above $190. In late April, Credo moved to all-time highs near $195. Much of this enthusiasm comes as Credo agreed to acquire DustPhotonics, adding more optical networking products to its primarily copper-based lineup.

As Credo shares surge to unprecedented levels, insiders are capitalizing, selling around $21 million worth of shares in Q2. Still, less than a month into Q2, this selling is largely consistent with Q1 selling. Over those full three months, sales came in near $53 million.

Additionally, the majority of Q2 sales came under 105b-1 plans or were relatively small as a percentage of individual holdings, making them not overly concerning. For example, despite making multiple sales, Chi Fung Cheng lowered total shares held by less than 2% and still holds over 6 million Credo shares.

Given these mitigating circumstances, Credo’s Q2 sales do not provide much of a negative signal.

CoreWeave’s Insider Sales Rise by More Than 3X in Q2

Last up is one of the AI trade’s most well-known newcomers, neo-cloud company CoreWeave NASDAQ: CRWV. CoreWeave has also been a highly volatile stock since going public in March 2025. The stock moved up to over $180 in June 2025, before ending the year near $70. CoreWeave has seen a huge recovery in 2026, up almost 50% to around $107 per share.

Throughout its publicly traded history, CoreWeave has seen a very large amount of insider selling, at $6.55 billion. After a big drop in selling during Q1, insiders are stepping up their sales again. In April alone, MarketBeat has tracked more than $1.3 billion in sales, over three times higher than the $396 million in sales that took place in all of Q1.

Importantly, many of CoreWeave’s sales came under 105b-1 plans or had other mitigating factors. However, this is not true of one of CoreWeave’s largest insiders, hedge fund Magnetar Financial. Magnetar has sold hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of CoreWeave shares in Q2. Despite big-time sales, Magnetar continues to indirectly hold billions of dollars' worth of CoreWeave. Clearly, insiders are selling more as CoreWeave rises, a negative signal.

CoreWeave: Insiders Sell, Analysts Disagree

Among this group, CoreWeave’s insider selling activity is the most noteworthy. Notwithstanding recent selling, the huge value of trades around CoreWeave is a significant technical overhang on the stock. Magnetar has shown a consistent pattern of selling its shares, and the company still has massive exposure to CoreWeave. Due to this, the overhang is unlikely to abate soon.

Still, Wall Street analysts continue to take a generally bullish view on the stock. The MarketBeat consensus price target near $125 implies more than 15% upside in shares. The range of targets on CoreWeave is very wide. Targets updated in April stretch as high as $175 and as low as $67. These figures imply upside of more than 60% and downside of more than 35%, respectively, illustrating the large degree of uncertainty around this name.