Arista CEO Ullal April Trim at $170; Cresset Holds 11.43% Stake

Jayshree Ullal — founder, chair, and CEO of Arista Networks — filed a Form 4 covering an April 21, 2026 block of open-market sales. The transactions executed at prices between $167.64 and $170.51 per share. Total shares sold: approximately 79,801. Total dollar value: roughly $13.5 million. The cumulative Form 4 sell ledger over Ullal's filing history at Arista now stands at $2.20 billion across 1,981 transactions. Ullal retains 17,782,010 shares of ANET after the latest sale — a position worth approximately $3 billion at $170, indicating the founder is trimming rather than exiting.

The deeper story is in the 13F holder book. Excluding the standard passive index sleeve, Arista's largest active conviction position sits at a relatively unusual filer: Cresset Asset Management at $2.71 billion and 11.43% of its portfolio. Cresset is a multi-family-office and registered investment advisor with $40+ billion AUM serving ultra-high-net-worth families. Its concentrated 11.43% portfolio weight on ANET is the largest single-name conviction in the active layer of Arista's holder book — and it sits structurally different from the typical Wall Street active manager.

The April 21 sales in context

The Form 4 reports a sequence of S-coded transactions across the trading session:

• April 21: 8 lots at $167.64 to $170.51, totaling 79,801 shares
• Combined dollar value: approximately $13.5 million

The granular price tiers and small-lot execution are consistent with broker-algorithmic execution against a Rule 10b5-1 plan. Ullal has filed plan-based sale schedules across the post-2024 ANET rally cycle. The April 21 cadence is typical of plan execution, not discretionary timing.

ANET's price action through 2026 has been strong — the stock has rebuilt from the post-2024 networking-pause drawdown into fresh highs above $170. The April execution captured the recent rally effectively.

The 11.43% Cresset Asset Management position

Cresset Asset Management's $2.71 billion ANET position at 11.43% portfolio weight is the active conviction signal worth unpacking. Cresset operates as a multi-family-office and RIA based in Chicago, serving approximately 1,500 ultra-high-net-worth families across the US. The firm runs concentrated equity portfolios tailored to individual client risk profiles.

The 11.43% portfolio weight likely reflects a single major family-office client's concentrated bet on Arista. Multi-family-office structures often produce extreme single-name concentrations when a founder client (such as a tech-industry executive with substantial personal exposure to a specific company) directs the firm to manage a concentrated position outside their primary holding. Without disclosure of the underlying client, the position is plausibly a single tech-executive client's view that Arista's networking-AI thesis continues to outperform.

Whatever the underlying mechanic, the 11.43% concentration is one of the largest single-name positions in any sub-$50 billion AUM US-mandate active fund we track.

The other institutional layer

Excluding Cresset, ANET's institutional book reads as standard mega-cap consumer-tech 13F shape:

• BlackRock: $11.28 billion, 0.20% portfolio — slight underweight versus ANET's S&P weight near 0.23%.
• Vanguard Capital Management: $8.38 billion, 0.21% portfolio.
• State Street: $6.15 billion, 0.21% portfolio.
• FMR (Fidelity): $5.12 billion, 0.26% portfolio — slight overweight.
• Geode Capital (passive_index): $3.46 billion, 0.21% portfolio.
• Morgan Stanley: $2.38 billion, 0.14% portfolio — underweight.
• Capital Research Global Investors: $1.81 billion, 0.28% portfolio.

Outside Cresset's 11.43% concentration, the active overweights at ANET are modest. Fidelity at 0.26% and Capital Research at 0.28% are slight overweights, but the conviction layer is structurally thinner than at peer networking-equipment names. Vanguard Capital Management filed Schedule 13G on April 29, 2026 at 6.25% beneficial ownership — passive-index allocation, not active conviction.

What Ullal's plan-driven trim cadence means

Three observations:

1. Founder selling cadence is consistent across price cycles. Ullal has sold $2.2 billion cumulatively while ANET has traded from $40 (post-IPO) through $300+ in early 2024 and recovered to $170+ in April 2026. The cadence is plan-driven, not view-driven.
2. The 17.78 million-share retained position is structurally meaningful. At $170, Ullal still holds approximately $3 billion of direct ANET exposure. The founder economic alignment with the company remains substantial.
3. No external activist or 13D filings. Ullal is the founder-CEO with continued control of the strategic narrative. The institutional pressure is constructive.

What to track

1. Arista Q2 fiscal 2026 earnings (early August). AI-data-center networking revenue trajectory and 800G product cycle commentary will determine whether the April price action holds.
2. Cresset's Q2 2026 13F (due August 14, 2026). Whether the 11.43% portfolio weight on ANET holds or compresses is the cleanest signal of multi-family-office conviction shift. Track via the institutional signals feed.
3. Ullal's next Form 4. Watch Jayshree Ullal's filing history for any new 10b5-1 plan adoption dates and changes in execution cadence.
4. Broadcom and Cisco competitive dynamics. Arista's primary competitive landscape includes Broadcom (AVGO covered separately) and Cisco. AI-data-center networking decisions at Google, Meta, and other hyperscalers determine the share-shift trajectory.

Arista Networks' April Form 4 reads as standard founder plan-driven monetization. The institutional conviction layer is dominated by Cresset Asset Management's unusual 11.43% portfolio concentration — likely a single family-office client position rather than a broad institutional consensus. For a primer on reading multi-family-office and RIA 13F filings, see our explainer hub.

Source: SEC Form 4 filings dated 2026-04-21, accession listings at EDGAR — Ullal Jayshree filer index; Cresset Asset Management 13F at CIK 0001602491.