D.E. Shaw increased its holdings in Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio by more than 1,960% in the first quarter of 2025, its latest quarterly portfolio update showed.
The investment firm closed the first quarter of the year holding 8,606,248 shares becoming Nio‘s fifth largest institutional shareholder.
D.E. Shaw first took a position in Nio in early 2019, acquiring 2 million shares within months of the company’s IPO. Its largest-ever holding came in the second quarter of 2020, when it owned more than 19 million shares.
Since then, its stake had steadily declined, with occasional fluctuations over the past five years.
The recent jump followed a nearly sixfold increase in the third quarter of 2024 to over 4 million shares. However, the firm pared back that position by year-end, offloading 3.7 million shares and nearly exiting the stock.
D.E. Shaw also disclosed a sharp increase in its stake in Geely-backed Zeekr, which it nearly quadrupled to 1.33 million shares in the first quarter. Conversely, the firm reduced its position in XPeng by 27.4%, bringing its holdings down to 6,631,192 shares.
The firm lifted its holdings in Lucid Motors to nearly 39.67 million shares during the quarter, its highest on record.
After exiting its position in Rivian in late 2024, D.E. Shaw repurchased 68,246 shares in the first three months of 2025.
Meanwhile, the firm trimmed its Tesla stake by 42.8% to roughly 1.81 million shares.
According to Nasdaq, 490 institutional investors currently hold a combined 222.64 million shares in Nio. That figure marks a steep decline from early 2022, when institutional holdings peaked at nearly 600 million shares, based on Fintel data.
As of the end of 2024, UBS remained Nio’s largest institutional shareholder with 44.16 million shares, followed by Morgan Stanley with 24.4 million.
Susquehanna, which held 11.14 million shares at year-end, was overtaken in the first quarter by Bank of America, which doubled its position to 12.6 million shares, while Susquehanna trimmed its stake to 10.69 million.
Bank of America surpassed Susquehanna between January and March, as the second cut its stake to 10.69 million shares.
The bank had doubled its stake in the Chinese EV maker Nio to 12.6 million shares by March 31.
After D.E. Shaw, Citigroup ranked sixth, with a jump of over 430% to 7,306,143 shares. JP Morgan Chase reported that it nearly exited its position in Nio, having slashed its stake by 95.3% by the end of the quarter.
Nio will report its first quarter earnings results on June 3, in a call with the founder and CEO William Li and the chief financial officer Yu Qu, scheduled to begin at 8 am Eastern Time.
