According to Cointelegraph, Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, has sold 10 million shares of his company, valued at $1.22 billion. This marks his second significant sale in September. A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 30 revealed that Dell still holds over 16.91 million shares, worth more than $2 billion at the time of publication.
This recent sale follows another on September 23, where Dell disclosed selling 10 million shares worth approximately $1.17 billion across seven transactions between September 19 and September 23. Despite these sales, Dell Technologies' stock price has risen by 58.5% this year, according to Google Finance. The company's stock rejoined the S&P 500 on September 24, which tracks the largest 500 public companies in the United States.
Dell Technologies has benefited from increased interest in artificial intelligence (AI) companies, leading to a surge in demand for servers capable of running AI applications. The company's stock hit an all-time high of over $160 in May due to this growing demand for AI hardware. However, the reasons behind Dell's substantial stock sales remain unclear. Traders have not significantly reacted to the sales, with the stock price down just 0.33% in after-hours trading on September 30 and up 0.74% over the last five trading days.
In June, Dell sparked online speculation with a series of cryptic posts on X, leading many to believe he was exploring Bitcoin, either personally or for his business. Dell's posts included phrases like 'Scarcity creates value,' often associated with Bitcoin's limited supply of 21 million coins. This caught the attention of Bitcoin advocate and MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor, who responded by saying, 'Bitcoin is Digital Scarcity.' Dell later shared an AI-generated image of the Sesame Street character Cookie Monster eating Bitcoin-themed cookies.
Despite these crypto-related posts, Dell Technologies did not add any Bitcoin to its balance sheet in the second quarter of this year. The company's August results showed a 9% year-on-year revenue increase, with record servers and networking revenue up 80% from the same period last year.