Tesla‘s Chief Executive Elon Musk warned on Thursday that investors betting against the electric-vehicle maker could face steep losses when the company achieves large-scale deployment of autonomous driving.
Musk’s remarks came in response to a list showing the largest net short sellers of Tesla shares.
MUFG Securities EMEA, a London-based investment banking unit of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, entered the list in the second quarter directly in the top place with a net short position valued at about $4.13 billion.
“If they don’t exit their short position before Tesla reaches autonomy at scale, they will be obliterated,” Musk said in a post on X.
Tesla began in June providing the first robotaxi rides in a geofenced area of Austin, Texas, using the recently refreshed Model Y vehicles.
Since then, the company has expanded the limited area several times while starting to provide ride-hailing services — with a safety operator in the driver seat — in San Francisco.
Additionally, Musk has recently said the FSD software will have a “step change improvement” as the company prepares to publicly release its robotaxi service, also scheduled for next month.
MUFG Securities EMEA was followed by Jane Street Group with about $2.77 billion and Citadel Advisors with roughly $1.38 billion.
Other names included Adapt Investment Managers, Belvedere Trading and Parallax Volatility Advisers, each holding net short positions between $495 million and $802 million.
The list, shared by X user Alexandra Merz, also included a range of hedge funds, proprietary trading firms and asset managers maintaining smaller short exposures.
Tesla shares have risen 6.1% over the past five sessions. However, it has fallen 16% so far this year, despite being 68.5% higher over the last twelve months.
Separately, a new J.D. Power study showed this week that while overall satisfaction with US fast-charging networks has fallen, Tesla’s Superchargers remain among the most trusted by EV owners.
The owners rank EV charging stations based on ease and speed of charging, availability of chargers, costs of charging and ease of payment, convenience of the location and how easy it is to find, physical conditions of the station and how safe the station is.
