As NVIDIA's stock price repeatedly hits new highs, board members have cashed out nearly $200 million.

Zhitong App has learned that two directors of NVIDIA, the world's most valuable chip company, recently sold approximately $180 million worth of the company's stock, becoming the latest group of insiders at NVIDIA to cash out near historic highs. The stock price of this AI chip leader has been continuously hitting new all-time highs. After a 240% surge in 2023, the stock has risen by 79% since the beginning of 2024. During Wednesday's U.S. stock trading session, NVIDIA's stock price hit another all-time high intraday and closed at $887.

According to a disclosure document, Tench Coxe, who served as Managing Director of the venture capital firm Sutter Hill Ventures and has been a member of NVIDIA's board of directors since 1993, sold 200,000 shares of NVIDIA stock on March 5 at prices ranging from $850.03 to $852.50. However, even after reducing his NVIDIA holdings, Coxe still holds over 3.7 million shares.

Mark Stevens, who has been a director of NVIDIA since 2008, sold 12,000 shares of NVIDIA stock on March 4 at prices ranging from $852.06 to $855.02.

NVIDIA's stock price has surged by over 79% this year, mainly because of the optimistic belief that the company's AI chips for artificial intelligence training/inference will continue to be in high demand globally. NVIDIA closed at a new high on Wednesday, marking five consecutive days of significant gains. NVIDIA has hit new highs multiple times this year, with a current market value of around $2.2 trillion, ranking just below Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. in the S&P 500 index.

Last month, following NVIDIA's unparalleled earnings report, some NVIDIA directors collectively sold approximately 99,000 shares of NVIDIA stock, with the total value of the stocks sold internally at that time reaching around $80 million.

With the groundbreaking generative AI - ChatGPT emerging, signaling the gradual entry of the world into a new AI era, not only the tech industry but various industries worldwide are experiencing a surge in demand for NVIDIA AI chips - specifically the A100/H100 chips used in AI training and inference fields. The tech giant once again shocked the world with its incredibly strong performance data, following the outstanding results of the previous three quarters.

In the fourth quarter of the 2024 fiscal year ending on January 28, NVIDIA's total revenue more than doubled, reaching $22.1 billion. The Data Center business unit, which provides A100/H100 chips for global data centers, has transformed from being a "side business" of NVIDIA (with gaming business being the most important) to the most powerful contributor to the tech giant's overall revenue.

The Data Center business unit of NVIDIA has been the top-performing department for several quarters, with Q4 revenue reaching $18.4 billion, a staggering increase of about 409% compared to the same period last year. Furthermore, NVIDIA expects the scale of data center infrastructure to double within five years. Meanwhile, the company's gaming business unit benefited from the global chip demand recovery trend, achieving a 56% year-on-year revenue growth to $2.9 billion.

After the financial report was released, some institutions even set NVIDIA's stock price target for the next 12 months at over $1000. Bernstein raised NVIDIA's target price from $700 to $1000; Melius Research raised it from $925 to $1000; Benchmark significantly increased the target price from $625 to $1000; Keybanc raised the target price from $740 to $1100.