Somebody has already said, out loud, that this goes down.
An activist short is a bet with a byline. The firm publishes the thesis, puts its name on it, and takes the other side of anyone who disagrees. These are the ones on the board, with the argument each one is making.
Across the board that is $15.82B of stock that was borrowed, sold, and has to be bought back at some point. That is not a forecast. It is 479M shares reported to FINRA, priced at today’s close.
Sorted smallest first, because size is the constraint. A tokenized share is arbitraged against the listed one, so buying it is passed through to the real order book rather than sitting in a pool, and the same money moves a $1B company a great deal further than a $100B one.
- Sold short, at today’s prices
- $15.82B
- 479M shares across 8 of 8
- Most shorted
- 31.9%
- QUBT, of its free float
- Slowest to buy back
- 7.4d
- QUBT, at normal volume
- Public campaigns
- 8
- 4 firms, 8 tickers
Campaigns are public record and quoted as published. Prices and market caps were cached on 3 Sept 2026, 22:36 UTC, refreshed nightly by the quotes worker. Short interest, from FINRA settlement data and stockanalysis.com, was cached on 3 Sept 2026, 22:37 UTC, refreshed twice daily. Open a ticker for the full breakdown and the squeeze model.
The firms
Who is on the other side, and what they are known for.
Kerrisdale Capital
3 tickers
New York research firm that publishes public short theses, usually on valuation, and holds the position while it argues the case.
Muddy Waters
2 tickers
Carson Block’s research outfit, known for due-diligence short reports since Sino-Forest in 2011.
Jim Chanos
1 ticker
The short seller who called Enron. Ran Kynikos Associates, now Chanos & Company, and tends to short a structure rather than a story.
Activist short sellers
2 tickers
More than one firm has published against this name without a single campaign standing out as the headline one.
RCAT
Position openRed Cat Holdings
$1.30B · Micro cap
Military and industrial drones, sold largely to defence buyers.
Kerrisdale Capital2025Report titled “Flying Blind”, aimed at the company’s contract pipeline.
QUBT
Position openQuantum Computing Inc
$1.80B · Micro cap
Photonic and thin-film lithium niobate quantum hardware.
Targeted alongside the rest of the listed quantum cohort, with the thesis aimed at revenue that has not arrived.
RGTI
Position openRigetti Computing
$5.07B · Small cap
Superconducting quantum processors, built and run in-house.
One of four listed quantum names targeted by activist shorts over the same stretch, on the same valuation-versus-revenue argument.
QBTS
Position openD-Wave Quantum
$6.26B · Small cap
Quantum annealing systems and an optimisation cloud service.
Kerrisdale CapitalApril 2025Report disputing the company’s quantum advantage claims and the commercial value of annealing.
IONQ
Position openIonQ
$15.50B · Mid cap
Trapped-ion quantum computers, sold as cloud access and hardware.
Kerrisdale Capital2025Announced short on valuation, arguing the stock traded near 40x consensus 2026 revenue for a business still far from commercial scale.
SOFI
Position openSoFi Technologies
$23.91B · Mid cap
A digital bank: lending, brokerage and deposits in one app.
Muddy WatersMarch 2026Short report the company publicly rebutted, floating legal action against the firm in response.
MSTR
May returnStrategy
$55.64B · Large cap
A software company that became a leveraged bitcoin holding vehicle.
Jim ChanosUnwound November 2025Short the stock against long bitcoin, betting the premium to net asset value would close. Closed at an mNAV under 1.25x, and he has since signalled interest in putting it back on.
APP
Position openAppLovin
$104.94B · Large cap
Mobile advertising and an ad-targeting model called Axon.
Muddy WatersMarch 2025Report questioning the company’s ad practices and data sourcing. The stock fell roughly 20% on it.