AI short sellers made $34.8bn this week: all 40 stocks, ranked

Short sellers betting against 40 of the main American artificial intelligence and chip stocks made an estimated $34.8bn in paper profits this week, ORTEX data show. The midterm results knocked the sector on fears of tighter rules on the technology and on data centers, and Thursday alone was worth $35.0bn to the shorts.

Friday gave some of it back. The stocks bounced, led by AMD, NVDA, MU, and the shorts lost an estimated $9.8bn on the day.

The biggest gains for shorts on the week came in NVDA (+$5.48bn), MU (+$4.50bn), LITE (+$2.35bn), AMD (+$2.11bn), WDC (+$1.99bn).

Not every bet paid. Shorts lost money on the week in AMZN (-$1.78bn), MSFT (-$580m), GOOGL (-$390m), GOOG (-$277m), ANET (-$25m), QCOM (-$8m), where the shares held up better than the rest of the group.

The Times reported these ORTEX figures on Friday.

Day by day

Day	Shorts' estimated gain
Monday	+$13.3bn
Tuesday	-$9.0bn
Wednesday	+$5.2bn
Thursday	+$35.0bn
Friday	-$9.8bn
Week	+$34.8bn

All 40 stocks

Sorted by the shorts' estimated gain on the week. A positive number is a gain for short sellers, a negative one a loss.

Company	Ticker	Shares short	Value short	Price, week	Price, Friday	Shorts, Friday	Shorts, week
NVIDIA Corporation	NVDA	304.9m	$56.91bn	-8.8%	+2.8%	-$1.54bn	+$5.48bn
Micron Technology, Inc.	MU	23.1m	$15.91bn	-22.0%	+5.1%	-$775m	+$4.50bn
Lumentum Holdings Inc.	LITE	7.6m	$4.07bn	-35.9%	+5.7%	-$218m	+$2.35bn
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.	AMD	37.8m	$16.99bn	-11.0%	+11.0%	-$1.69bn	+$2.11bn
Western Digital Corporation	WDC	19.4m	$5.11bn	-28.0%	-1.4%	+$75m	+$1.99bn
Broadcom Inc.	AVGO	54.5m	$15.99bn	-9.9%	+0.7%	-$118m	+$1.76bn
Sandisk Corporation	SNDK	5.0m	$4.17bn	-27.4%	+3.6%	-$143m	+$1.59bn
Marvell Technology, Inc.	MRVL	27.3m	$3.86bn	-28.1%	+5.7%	-$209m	+$1.51bn
Seagate Technology Holdings plc	STX	8.0m	$3.71bn	-28.5%	-1.2%	+$45m	+$1.48bn
Intel Corporation	INTC	146.8m	$8.26bn	-14.4%	+7.7%	-$592m	+$1.45bn
Palantir Technologies Inc.	PLTR	57.0m	$9.14bn	-12.9%	+3.5%	-$307m	+$1.37bn
Nebius Group N.V.	NBIS	48.3m	$6.25bn	-16.0%	+7.6%	-$440m	+$1.20bn
Dell Technologies Inc.	DELL	11.7m	$3.85bn	-22.5%	+3.7%	-$138m	+$1.12bn
Lam Research Corporation	LRCX	28.7m	$5.75bn	-16.2%	+8.2%	-$437m	+$1.11bn
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited	TSM	29.4m	$11.03bn	-7.6%	+6.3%	-$650m	+$909m
Applied Materials, Inc.	AMAT	15.1m	$5.03bn	-14.7%	+4.2%	-$204m	+$871m
SK hynix Inc.	SKHY	39.4m	$5.02bn	-14.7%	+2.8%	-$136m	+$867m
CoreWeave, Inc.	CRWV	86.2m	$4.00bn	-15.4%	+6.3%	-$236m	+$734m
Oracle Corporation	ORCL	49.4m	$5.73bn	-11.2%	+0.8%	-$44m	+$707m
Vertiv Holdings Co	VRT	13.9m	$2.54bn	-21.4%	+3.5%	-$85m	+$690m
Arm Holdings plc	ARM	18.0m	$3.14bn	-15.2%	+4.7%	-$142m	+$564m
Astera Labs, Inc.	ALAB	8.1m	$1.55bn	-26.3%	+6.3%	-$91m	+$549m
Texas Instruments Incorporated	TXN	21.0m	$5.82bn	-7.8%	-0.3%	+$17m	+$498m
KLA Corporation	KLAC	23.7m	$3.28bn	-12.3%	+6.7%	-$206m	+$466m
Super Micro Computer, Inc.	SMCI	91.0m	$2.62bn	-12.7%	+6.2%	-$153m	+$367m
Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd	CRDO	10.1m	$1.22bn	-20.2%	+7.3%	-$83m	+$306m
ON Semiconductor Corporation	ON	31.2m	$1.98bn	-11.7%	+0.5%	-$9m	+$262m
IREN Limited	IREN	100.6m	$2.18bn	-9.6%	+20.0%	-$363m	+$225m
ASML Holding N.V.	ASML	1.3m	$1.88bn	-9.0%	+5.0%	-$90m	+$184m
Coherent Corp.	COHR	8.9m	$1.72bn	-8.3%	+13.6%	-$206m	+$157m
Applied Digital Corporation	APLD	64.5m	$1.00bn	-12.7%	+9.7%	-$89m	+$147m
Meta Platforms, Inc.	META	28.8m	$17.60bn	-0.8%	+0.8%	-$146m	+$136m
Core Scientific, Inc.	CORZ	77.4m	$0.91bn	-11.2%	+3.3%	-$29m	+$115m
Monolithic Power Systems, Inc.	MPWR	1.6m	$1.91bn	-1.7%	+5.2%	-$95m	+$36m
QUALCOMM Incorporated	QCOM	30.1m	$4.97bn	+0.4%	+5.5%	-$260m	-$8m
Arista Networks, Inc.	ANET	12.0m	$2.05bn	+1.1%	+7.3%	-$139m	-$25m
Alphabet Inc.	GOOG	49.9m	$14.16bn	+2.1%	+0.8%	-$109m	-$277m
Alphabet Inc.	GOOGL	78.4m	$22.33bn	+1.8%	+0.8%	-$173m	-$390m
Microsoft Corporation	MSFT	65.3m	$34.64bn	+1.7%	-1.0%	+$347m	-$580m
Amazon.com, Inc.	AMZN	94.9m	$24.60bn	+7.9%	-0.3%	+$86m	-$1.78bn

London

In London, short sellers across the main indices made an estimated £378m on Friday. The biggest gains were in National Grid (£49m), Shell (£42m), British American Tobacco (£25m). Stocks with direct exposure to the technology added less: London Stock Exchange Group (£18m), RELX (£7m), Sage (£3m).

How we calculate it

Each day's estimate is the number of shares sold short, from ORTEX short interest estimates (latest 2026-11-05), times that day's change in the share price. Monday to Thursday use closing prices; Friday uses Friday's closing price. The figures are paper gains and losses before borrowing costs, and they do not capture positions opened or closed during the week.