I believe he cashed out quickly (before the stock tanked during the crash) unlike ESR who just wrote articles about how awesome it felt to be a millionaire and then watched his money disappear.

I remember at the time on Slashdot the comment du jour was that Torvalds dumping his RHT did not reflect well on the future of Linux as a product. Not a popular view, although obviously RedHat eventually came back with a vengeance. The problem was that the stock was incredibly inflated, so I was always of the opinion that it was the right thing to do for him.