Key points
- Applied Digital executives buy $6.7 million of stock
- CoreWeave founder sales go quiet after $2.3 billion
- ARK buys CoreWeave and sells Palantir
Two purchases on our insider trading tracker caught my eye this week. Applied Digital (APLD) president Jason Zhang and chief executive Wes Cummins bought a combined $6.7 million of stock on October 16, the day the shares closed at a one-year low.
Few AI-company insiders on the tracker were buying during the selloff. The Nasdaq had just recorded its worst week since June, and Applied Digital had lost nearly two-thirds of its value since late May. I opened the filings to see how much each executive bought and whether the purchases were part of prearranged trading plans.
That led me to a different pattern at CoreWeave (CRWV). Its founders had sold about $2.3 billion of stock this year, but their reported sales had gone quiet. Meanwhile, Cathie Wood's ARK Invest was buying CoreWeave and selling Palantir (PLTR).
What the Applied Digital filings show
Zhang bought 300,000 shares at an average of $18.86, spending about $5.7 million, his Form 4 shows. His purchases ranged from $18.40 to $19.16 a share. Cummins bought 55,803 shares at $18.04, spending just over $1 million, according to his filing.
Both filed on October 19 and reported open-market purchases. Neither checked the box indicating a transaction under a Rule 10b5-1 plan, which lets insiders arrange trades in advance.
Zhang, whom Applied Digital identifies as a co-founder, became president in January. Cummins is also chairman. After his purchase, Cummins's filing listed 5,874,453 shares held directly, including 1.5 million unvested restricted shares, and another 17,590,238 held by Cummins Family Ltd.
The purchases came after a steep decline. Applied Digital closed at $18.05 on October 16, down about 64% from its May 28 close of $49.65. It touched $17.65 during the session and finished the following Friday at $18.25.
Zhang's purchase ranks third among October insider buys on our tracker, behind Berkshire Hathaway's Lennar purchase and Ryan Cohen's GameStop buys. Other AI-related purchases on the tracker were much smaller: a Nebius director spent about $125,000 over three days.
The filings also showed a seller. Applied Digital director Richard Nottenburg sold 31,250 shares for $682,500 on October 13, three days before Zhang and Cummins bought. His average price was $21.84, about 16% above Zhang's purchase price. His Form 4 did not mark the sale as part of a prearranged trading plan. He had also sold $2.34 million of stock in August.
CoreWeave's founders sold $2.3 billion this year, then the sales went quiet
At CoreWeave, the filings show substantial founder sales earlier this year, followed by a quiet stretch. All three co-founders sold under prearranged 10b5-1 plans.
Chief executive Michael Intrator sold 8.9 million shares for $852.4 million between January 6 and September 29, by our tracker's count. From mid-April on, he sold at least 307,692 shares every week. Brian Venturo sold $885.8 million this year through June 30, and Brannin McBee sold $568.7 million through August 24. Together that's about $2.3 billion.
Intrator's weekly sales ended with one on September 29, at an average of $86.65 a share. No further founder sales appeared in the filings I reviewed through October 22, other than shares sold to cover taxes when their stock awards vested on September 30. None of them filed a Form 144 notice of a planned sale in October either. Intrator adopted his plan on November 20, 2025. His filings don't say whether it's run out or been paused. You can see his full record on his insider page.
Two other CoreWeave executives did sell in October, in smaller amounts. Chief financial officer Nitin Agrawal sold 22,579 shares for $1.8 million on October 12 under his plan. Chief revenue officer Jonathan Jones sold 21,569 shares on October 13 under a plan he adopted in June, a day after he sold 15,811 shares to cover taxes on stock that vested.
The last founder sale came just before the stock's hardest stretch of the year. CoreWeave closed at $54.24 on Friday, 37% below Intrator's last sale price and its lowest close in a year. Its bond yields neared 15% in mid-October.
Cathie Wood bought CoreWeave as it fell
ARK bought 825,957 CoreWeave shares across five trading days in October, according to its daily trade reports as compiled by Benzinga and GuruFocus. At each day's closing price, that's $61.7 million. It started with $27.8 million on October 6 and 7. Then came $12.4 million on October 14, the day the stock closed at $65.78, followed by $13.4 million on October 15 and $8.1 million on October 19.
Wood has said why she's buying. In an interview in Seoul on October 16, she compared CoreWeave to Coinbase, whose debt sold off before the company went on to profit, and said the investment will pay off. "This happens very often with young companies," she said.
With Palantir, ARK has been doing the reverse. It sold 115,464 Palantir shares on at least five days between October 14 and October 22, worth $22.9 million. The biggest day was October 14, at 31,432 shares, and the sales kept going on October 20 and 22. Palantir's month looks nothing like CoreWeave's. It hit a record $212.94 during trading on October 12 and closed Friday at $196.75, up about 11% for the year.
So ARK is selling the stock near its high and buying the one near its low. Palantir is still the bigger holding, though. In the ARK Innovation ETF's holdings file dated October 23, which values each stock at its October 22 closing price, Palantir was worth $168.0 million, or 2.80% of the fund. CoreWeave was worth $144.2 million, or 2.41%.
Why does ARK's holdings file look so different?
The holdings files confused me at first. I compared the ARK Innovation file for October 23 with an archived copy from October 2, expecting CoreWeave's share count to be up. It wasn't. It was down 11.4%, from 2,926,750 shares to 2,594,001.
The other holdings offered a clue. The fund's share counts for Tesla, Nvidia, Broadcom, Coinbase, and several other companies each fell by about 28.2% over those three weeks. Those matching reductions suggest ETF redemptions affected the holdings, with investors pulling money out and shares leaving the fund in proportion. Against that apparent common reduction, CoreWeave's share count fell less and Palantir's fell more, at 34.4%, consistent with ARK's reported trades.
That's why the daily trade reports matter more than the share counts when you want to see what Wood actually chose to do. You can follow ARK's quarterly filings on our ARK Invest page.
What the filings can't tell us
Insider buying is a lot rarer than selling, which is why two executives spending $6.7 million at a one-year low caught my eye. It shows the two people running the company buying more stock at that price. It doesn't show what happens next. Friday's close of $18.25 was still below Zhang's average purchase price of $18.86.
For CoreWeave, the quiet stretch in founder sales is harder to read. Their sales ran on a schedule set months ago, so the gap may say as much about the plans' calendar as about the stock. ARK's trades are easier to read, since Wood has said what she thinks. You can check the next filings for both companies on the Applied Digital and CoreWeave pages.
Prices are official closing prices from Yahoo Finance. ARK trade values are estimates at each day's closing price, as published with its daily trade reports. Insider totals for 2026 are our calculations from Form 4 filings on our tracker.
