Google Cofounders Page And Brin Selling Alphabet Shares After Years Of No Sales

After not selling a single share of their Alphabet stock since 2017—a period during which the stock price, and their net worths, more than doubled—Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have begun to offload their shares in the tech giant.

Page and Brin, the eighth and ninth richest people in the world, have collectively sold about $448 million worth of Alphabet stock over the past month, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Brin got the sales started, and has now taken home, after taxes, about $122 million from sales between May 7 and May 11. Page followed shortly after, with a set of sales between May 11 and May 13. On Thursday June 3, he unloaded another $41 million worth of shares, bringing his total take home this year to nearly $160 million after tax deductions. The sales represent a tiny sliver of each man’s net worth.

Brin last sold shares of Alphabet in November 2017, while Page had not unloaded shares since February of that year. At the time of Forbes’ 2017 World’s Billionaires list, Brin was worth $39.8 billion and Page was worth $40.7 billion. After the recent stock transactions, Forbes estimates that Brin is now worth $99.2 billion and Page is worth $102.4 billion.

It is not clear why the pair have recommenced their stock sales, and an Alphabet spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication. In December 2019, Page and Brin stepped down from their positions as CEO and president of Alphabet, respectively, but the two remain on the board and together have majority voting power in the company. Even after the recent sales, they hold more than 51% of Alphabet’s voting shares, meaning they are able to steer boardroom decisions at the Mountain View, California firm.

Since stepping down from their day-to-day positions, Page and Brin have kept low profiles. Bayshore Global Management, the family office that manages Brin’s wealth, opened a new location in Singapore last October. His philanthropic organization, the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, has reportedly donated $104 million to Covid-19 relief efforts. Recent news about Page is even more scant; outside of Alphabet, he is known as an investor in the embattled flying car company Kitty Hawk. When Alphabet was called upon to testify before Congress in 2020, it was CEO Sundar Pichai who appeared in the public eye.