Microsoft and Palantir insiders: $218 million sold, all on file

Microsoft sells AI through Azure and Copilot. Palantir sells AI platforms to governments and companies. Both stocks have been carried by the AI trade, and both companies' officers and directors must report their trades on SEC Form 4. Here is what those filings say.

Method

We parsed the XML of every Form 4 in EDGAR for Microsoft (CIK 789019) filed from April 15 to October 14, 2026, and for Palantir (CIK 1321655) filed from June 2 to October 14, 2026. We counted open-market sales (code S) and purchases (code P), and read the footnotes and the Rule 10b5-1 checkbox on each sale.

Microsoft: 38 filings, 23 sale lines

Microsoft insiders reported 23 open-market sale lines for 174,077 shares, worth $85,913,315 at the reported prices. No open-market purchases appear in the 38 filings.

• Satya Nadella, CEO, sold 86,525 shares on September 1, 2026 for about $43.4 million. The filing's Rule 10b5-1 box is checked. The day before, 70,466 of his shares were withheld to cover taxes on 178,622 shares that vested on August 31.
• Amy Hood, CFO, sold 41,674 shares on September 14 (about $20.8 million) and 7,305 shares on October 13 (about $4.0 million), both with the 10b5-1 box checked.
• Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft's commercial business, sold 25,500 shares between June 1 and August 5 for about $12.0 million. Takeshi Numoto, chief marketing officer, sold 11,810 shares for about $5.2 million. These filings do not check the 10b5-1 box.

Plan-flagged sales come to about $68.1 million of Microsoft's $85.9 million total, roughly 79% nContext: n=23 Microsoft sale lines in 38 Form 4 filings · filed Apr 15 to Oct 14, 2026 · SEC EDGAR, our tally · margin: not applicable, full count.

Palantir: 23 filings, every sale on a plan

Palantir insiders reported 52 open-market sale lines for 814,136 shares, worth $132,484,796. Every one of those lines is flagged as a Rule 10b5-1 plan sale. No open-market purchases appear in the 23 filings.

The pattern differs by person. CEO Alex Karp's sales all took place on one day, August 20, 2026, after 975,000 restricted stock units vested; his footnote cites a plan entered into on March 12, 2026. Chief technology officer Shyam Sankar sold in two batches, July 2 and August 6, under a plan entered into on March 11, 2026, and separately reported gifts of 350,000 shares in August. Director Alexander Moore sold exactly 16,000 shares each month from June to September under a plan entered into on December 11, 2025.

Reading the two records side by side

Palantir's insider selling is larger in dollars, about $132.5 million against Microsoft's $85.9 million over windows of different length, and it is entirely pre-scheduled. Microsoft's is smaller, and about $17.8 million of it, the sales by Althoff, Numoto and human resources chief Amy Coleman, is not flagged as plan trading. Neither company had an insider buying shares on the open market in these windows.

A 10b5-1 plan is a written program adopted while an insider has no material non-public information, with a cooling-off period before any trade. It is designed to show that trades were scheduled in advance. A missing checkbox does not mean a trade was improper; it means the filing does not claim that defense for that trade.