Short sellers are betting billions more against Nvidia than they are Apple and Tesla. Outstanding short bets against Nvidia total $34 billion, S3 Partners’ data reviewed by Reuters shows. That’s nearly double the value of short bets against Apple and Tesla, which stand at $18 billion and $19 billion, respectively.
Indeed, there are reasons to believe that Nvidia’s stock price will come back to earth from sky-high levels. The AI chipmaker’s shares have surged more than 200% from last year as demand for its semiconductors (i.e. its Blackwell and Hopper GPUs) from Big Tech exploded. The company has consistently surpassed Wall Street’s expectations, those of both bears and bulls, and its stock price flew past $1,000 after reporting record-breaking first-quarter earnings. It even recently surpassed Apple as the world’s second-most valuable company. But skeptics worry that the stock market is in an AI bubble that will burst, sending Nvidia’s shares down with it. Nvidia’s very own, highly-concentrated customer base is working to build its own AI chips.
And Nvidia’s dominance is coming under scrutiny from federal regulators. On Thursday, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission reportedly reached a deal to investigate Nvidia — along with Microsoft and Open AI — over potentially anti-competitive behavior in the AI space. That investigation may or may not lead to lawsuits against Nvidia, which would drain the company of resources it could otherwise devote towards potentially innovative AI hardware. Still, experts have noted that a case against Nvidia would be preemptive and is unlikely to succeed.
Though short bets against Nvidia have mounted, they still amount to just 1% of the company’s stock market value, Reuters reported.