Baillie Gifford & Co cut its Tesla stake for a 27th consecutive quarter in the three months to September 30, leaving the Edinburgh-based investment firm with its smallest position in the carmaker since it first reported Tesla shares, in its filing for the first quarter of 2013.
According to a Form 13F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, the firm held 642,296 Tesla shares at the end of September, down 88,345, or 12.1%, from 730,641 at the end of June and down 61.2% from 1,657,487 a year earlier. It also trimmed its Rivian and Ferrari holdings, the only other carmakers in the filing.
The three stakes were worth a combined $2.17 billion at the end of the quarter, down from $2.38 billion three months earlier. Baillie Gifford’s total reported holdings fell 3.9% to $105.9 billion over the same period.
The carmakers made up 2.05% of that total, their smallest share since March 2014, and their combined value was the lowest since September 2014.
Tesla Near the Exit
The Tesla holding was worth $227.9 million at September 30, down from $307.3 million at June 30, and made up 0.22% of the portfolio.
Baillie Gifford was a long-time Tesla backer. It first reported 2,351,661 shares in its filing for the first quarter of 2013, equivalent to about 35.3 million after Tesla’s 5-for-1 split in 2020 and 3-for-1 split in 2022.
Its stake peaked at 13,826,979 shares at the end of 2019, equivalent to about 207.4 million shares today.
The position’s value peaked at $19.27 billion at the end of 2020, when Tesla was the firm’s largest holding at 10.7% of the reported total. Its last Schedule 13G amendment on Tesla, filed on September 2, 2020, reported 39,630,758 shares, or 4.25% of the company, as of August 31 that year.
The current holding is 99.7% below the 2019 peak on a split-adjusted basis. The firm has reduced its Tesla position in every quarter since the start of 2020. It held 7,422,673 shares at the end of 2024, cut that to 1,762,022 in the first quarter of 2025 and nearly halved the stake again in the second quarter of 2026, to 730,641 shares from 1,302,148.
Scottish Mortgage Sells Out
Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, a London-listed fund managed by Baillie Gifford, said in its interim report on November 6 that it sold its remaining Tesla holding in the six months to September 30.
“Since we first invested in 2013, it has returned 13 times the capital invested, but we felt the share price had come to reflect much of its promise in autonomy and robotics,” the trust’s managers wrote.
The 13F aggregates holdings reported by Baillie Gifford & Co and four affiliated managers, including Baillie Gifford & Co Limited, which manages the trust. Of the 642,296 Tesla shares still reported, 99,866 were held under sole investment discretion and 542,430 under discretion shared with the affiliates.
Rivian Below 42 Million Shares
Baillie Gifford held 41,758,982 Rivian Class A shares at the end of September, down 1,451,366, or 3.4%, from 43,210,348 at the end of June. The stake was worth $623.9 million, down from $749.7 million, as Rivian’s stock declined over the quarter.
It was the firm’s smallest Rivian position since the second quarter of 2024, when it held 33,015,793 shares, and 17.1% below the 50,357,579-share peak it reported at the end of September 2024.
A Schedule 13G filed in November 2024 put that peak stake at 5.0%, and a February 2025 amendment reported 4.90% as of the end of 2024.
The current holding equals 2.87% of the 1,455,696,138 Class A shares Rivian reported outstanding on October 20, down from 3.22% at June 30, when Baillie Gifford was Rivian’s third-largest filer behind Amazon and BlackRock.
The firm had trimmed the position for four consecutive quarters through September 2025 before briefly adding shares in the first quarter of 2026.
Ferrari Cut
Ferrari remains Baillie Gifford’s largest carmaker holding by value, a position it has held since the first quarter of 2025. The firm reported 3,350,541 Ferrari shares worth $1.32 billion at September 30, down 220,185 shares, or 6.2%, from 3,570,726 at the end of June. Ferrari ranked 16th by value in the filing.
The value of the stake barely moved, slipping 0.4%, as Ferrari’s share price rose over the quarter. The holding equals 1.91% of the 175.4 million common shares Ferrari reported outstanding at September 30.
It was the 18th consecutive quarterly reduction, a run that began in the second quarter of 2022, and the smallest Ferrari position in the 43 filings since the stock first appeared in the first quarter of 2016. The holding peaked at 18,155,973 shares at the end of 2016 and has fallen 81.5% since then.
Scottish Mortgage valued its own Ferrari holding at £321.9 million ($431.5 million), or 1.7% of its total assets, at the end of September. Ferrari said last week that 2027 output of its Luce EV was fully allocated.
From Nio to Ferrari
At the end of 2020, five carmaker holdings were worth $27.87 billion, or 15.5% of Baillie Gifford’s reported total. Tesla accounted for $19.27 billion, Nio American depositary shares for $5.26 billion and Ferrari for $2.72 billion, along with 29.7 million Fiat Chrysler shares and a small Tata Motors stake.
Baillie Gifford held 121,059,075 Nio ADSs at the end of 2022, cut the stake by 83% to 18,904,985 in the first quarter of 2024 and reported none from the second quarter of 2024. It has not reported Stellantis since Fiat Chrysler merged into it.
It also held as many as 14,829,340 Li Auto ADSs in mid-2021. The firm sold most of that position in 2022 and kept a residual of a few dozen shares from late 2023, and the last 53 were gone by the first quarter of 2026.
Outside the Filing
Form 13F filings cover only U.S.-listed securities and do not show positions in shares listed elsewhere. Scottish Mortgage valued its Hong Kong-listed BYD holding at £144.3 million ($193.4 million) at September 30, down from £203.5 million at March 31.
“BYD faced intense domestic competition, but vehicle exports rose by two-thirds, with overseas now accounting for over half of revenues,” the trust’s managers wrote.
SpaceX Overshadows Tesla
Baillie Gifford reported 39,005,040 SpaceX Class A shares worth $5.88 billion, its third-largest holding and about 26 times the value of its Tesla stake. The count fell 24.1% from 51,397,806 in June, when SpaceX was the firm’s largest holding at $8.78 billion.
Scottish Mortgage said it reduced SpaceX “as lock-ups allowed, not because our enthusiasm dimmed,” after the holding grew to more than a quarter of its portfolio. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in October that Tesla and SpaceX had formed special committees to weigh a merger.
Among self-driving companies, the firm raised its Pony AI stake slightly to 12,514,275 ADSs worth $81.8 million, the most since it first reported the company in the second quarter of 2025. It cut Aurora Innovation by 3.5% to 53,224,076 shares worth $294.9 million, its smallest since the first quarter of 2024, and sold its last Mobileye shares in the second quarter.
Baillie Gifford was founded as an investment partnership in 1908 and is wholly owned by its working partners. It reported $237 billion in assets under management as of March 31.
