Severin Hacker, co-founder and chief technology officer of Duolingo (DUOL), has filed 124 Form 4 transactions across his tenure, all concentrated in a single company. The aggregate picture is decisively one-sided: he has recorded zero open-market purchases and roughly $28.5 million in open-market sales, alongside about $3.8 million in shares acquired through option exercises and conversions. The recent activity, spanning November 2025 through May 2026, reinforces that bias—13 sales events with no buys, though the bulk of the dollar volume in that window came not from discretionary sales but from automatic tax-withholding dispositions.
The most recent filings, dated May 27, 2026, show an option exercise paired with a "F" code transaction valued at $3.44 million—shares withheld to cover tax obligations, a mechanical event rather than a market decision. Similar patterns appear on February 17, 2026 ($3.44 million withheld) and December 1, 2025 ($5.89 million withheld). The only outright open-market sales in the recent period cluster on November 19 and November 4, 2025, with 13 separate "S" transactions totaling roughly $3.5 million. These range from small dispositions near $49,000 to a single $539,000 sale, executed in multiple tranches on the same day—a common approach for insiders seeking to minimize market impact.
A December 8, 2025 gift and conversion transaction, valued at zero, adds a non-monetary layer to the mix. The overall pattern—heavy selling, no buying, and significant automatic withholdings tied to equity compensation—suggests a founder steadily monetizing vested stock rather than accumulating additional exposure. The absence of any "P" code purchases across 124 filings makes the directional signal unambiguous, even if the motivations behind individual sales remain undisclosed in the Form 4 data.
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