Bears hunt for new cloud stocks! Five companies including Nebius (NBIS.US) were shorted for about $17 billion, and bears surged $6 billion this month

The Zhitong Finance App noticed that short sellers took advantage of the sell-off of AI infrastructure stocks in October. So far this month, bearish bets on five US data centers and “new cloud” companies have generated a net profit of about 6 billion US dollars.

This round of decline has intensified scrutiny of related companies' borrowing to expand AI computing power capabilities. According to ORTEX data, CoreWeave (CRWV.US), IREN (IREN.US), Nebius Group (NBIS.US), Applied Digital (APLD.US), and Core Scientific (CORZ.US) all attracted large numbers of short positions, accounting for about 20% to 26% of their tradable shares.

ORTEX said that the five companies' total shares of about 17 billion US dollars have been shorted, and the cost of borrowing is still low for them.

Among this group, Nebius (NBIS.US) brought the biggest monthly book profit to short sellers this month, reaching $2.94 billion. However, these positions still lost $3.33 billion this year, which shows how fast this deal is changing. The company's shorting ratio has risen to 20% of its tradable shares, compared to 15.4% at the beginning of 2026.

CoreWeave (CRWV.US) was also a major target. Its stock price has fallen by more than 35% this month, bringing short sellers nearly $1.7 billion in book profit. Currently, the shorting ratio accounts for 23.7% of its tradable shares, up from 19.6% in early October.

Short positions on IREN (IREN.US) and Applied Digital (APLD.US) made a combined profit of over $1.2 billion this month, while Core Scientific (CORZ.US) short positions contributed an additional $115 million. Core Scientific's shorting ratio was 23.1% of its tradable shares.