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9 Short Squeeze Stocks That Could Take Off

In 2021, groups of traders on Reddit and other social media platforms made short squeezes a hot topic on Wall Street by orchestrating targeted buying campaigns that temporarily sent the share prices of heavily shorted stocks such as GameStop Corp. (ticker: GME) and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. (AMC) soaring.

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Short squeezes occur when a stock’s price rises enough to force short sellers to buy the stock en masse to close out their positions. Short squeezes typically don’t last long, but they can be extremely profitable for opportunistic traders. Here are nine potential short squeeze stocks to watch in 2026, according to Ortex Analytics:

Stock Short interest Cost to borrow
Rumble Inc. (RUM) 26.2% 22.5%
Lucky Strike Entertainment Corp. (LUCK) 17.5% 23.9%
EverCommerce Inc. (EVCM) 13.4% 30.4%
PureCycle Technologies Inc. (PCT) 36.3% 11.8%
indie Semiconductor Inc. (INDI) 31.2% 8.6%
SELLAS Life Sciences Group Inc. (SLS) 32.2% 14.5%
Netlist Inc. (NLST) 10.4% 16.2%
Polestar Automotive Holding UK PLC (PSNY) 6.5% 48.2%
ARS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (SPRY) 63.6% 2.3%

Rumble Inc. (RUM)

Rumble is a politically conservative streaming video platform that emphasizes a commitment to free speech and is a competitor to YouTube. Since the company went public in 2022, it has exhibited the type of extreme volatility that can lead to large short squeezes. In roughly six weeks from mid-November 2024 to late December 2024, the election victory of President Donald Trump spiked Rumble’s share price from under $6 to over $15. In 2026, Rumble is embracing decentralized artificial intelligence via its OpenClaw Starter Package for Rumble Cloud. Rumble’s short interest has grown to 26% of its float, or free-trading shares.

Lucky Strike Entertainment Corp. (LUCK)

Lucky Strike Entertainment operates bowling centers that typically include lounge seating, arcades, and food and beverage services. In addition to casual public bowling, these centers host amateur and professional bowling tournaments and events. Short sellers likely see negative analyst commentary, stagnant same-store sales and recent earnings misses as signs Lucky Strike is dead in the water. The $1 billion company also carries $3.2 billion in debt, another troubling indicator. However, a surprise earnings beat or turnaround in foot traffic could trigger a major short squeeze. Ortex estimates more than 17% of LUCK’s float is held in short positions.

EverCommerce Inc. (EVCM)

EverCommerce operates a service commerce platform that provides vertically tailored, software-as-a-service solutions such as EverHealth, EverPro and EverWell to small- and medium-sized businesses in the health, home and wellness industries. The company’s tools help streamline business management, marketing technology, customer engagement and other processes. In addition to profitability pressures and slowing growth, the company is dealing with the overhang from class action lawsuits related to recent company missteps. Legal troubles can set a stock up for a huge bounce if cases are dismissed or the outcomes are better or cheaper than expected. EverCommerce’s short interest is just over 13% of its float.

PureCycle Technologies Inc. (PCT)

PureCycle Technologies recycles waste polypropylene into virgin polymer with the goal of making plastic a renewable resource. PureCycle went public via a SPAC merger in 2021. At the time of the merger, the stock was trading at around $32 per share, but it has dropped to below $10 per share today. Short sellers are likely betting against PureCycle because of its lackluster fundamental performance and its price-to-sales ratio of around 160. PureCycle reported just $8.4 million in revenue in 2025 and generated a $182.6 million net loss. PureCycle’s short interest is more than 36% of its float.

[Read: 7 Growth Stocks That Also Pay Dividends]

indie Semiconductor Inc. (INDI)

indie Semiconductor is an auto technology company that provides software and semiconductor solutions for driver automation, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), electrification and other applications. The company has direct partnerships with automakers such as Mercedes-Benz and BYD. Auto suppliers also use indie’s systems-on-chips (SoCs) for LiDAR, radar and ultrasound modules. However, U.S. autonomous vehicle leader Waymo famously uses its own internally developed LiDAR and sensor hardware. Despite huge upside for AV technology, indie reports consistent net losses and its revenue growth has stagnated. Ortex estimates around 31% of INDI’s float is held in short positions, suggesting short squeeze potential.

SELLAS Life Sciences Group Inc. (SLS)

SELLAS Life Sciences is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that is developing immunotherapeutic treatments for various cancers. The company’s leading drug candidates include Galinpepimut-S (GPS) and SLS009 for treating Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). SELLAS’s share price is down about 37% overall in the past five years, but the stock demonstrated its short squeeze potential in December 2025. SLS stock rallied from less than $1.50 to around $5 in about a month, fueled largely by positive GPS trial data. Ortex estimates about 32% of SLS’s float is held in short positions, suggesting another squeeze is possible if SELLAS reports more encouraging data.

Netlist Inc. (NLST)

Netlist designs and sells memory subsystems used in the communications and computing markets. Its leading products include enterprise-grade solid-state drives (SSDs) designed for data centers and high-performance computing, as well as its hybrid memory flash technology. Despite a large uptick in revenue growth to finish out 2025, Netlist is still reporting consistent net losses. But while the company’s core business has delivered mixed results, the stock could experience a major short squeeze if Netlist maintains its legal momentum following recent patent dispute victories over Samsung Electronics Ltd. (5930.KS) and Micron Technology Inc. (MU). The stock’s short interest is up to more than 10% of its float.

Polestar Automotive Holding UK PLC (PSNY)

Polestar Automotive designs and manufactures battery-electric vehicles. In addition to the company’s core Polestar 2 high-volume electric performance fastback model, Polestar’s product lineup includes the Polestar 3 luxury SUV, Polestar 4 SUV coupe and Polestar 5 high-performance four-door GT. In the past five years, Polestar has been a short seller’s dream. Deep net losses, consistent dilution, rising debt and a reverse stock split have driven the stock down about 93% in that time. American drivers are also increasingly turning to hybrid vehicles rather than pure EVs. Still, Polestar’s short interest is 6% of its float, giving it short squeeze potential. The cost to borrow is currently more than 48%, indicating high short-seller demand.

ARS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (SPRY)

ARS Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing neffy, the first non-injectable nasal spray to treat anaphylaxis and other emergency Type I allergic reactions. Neffy was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2024, and ARS has shifted its priorities to global expansion and additional indications and combinations for neffy. ARS has made steady progress with neffy, including gaining FDA approval to remove its age requirement in March 2026 and approval for commercial launch in Canada in April 2026. However, winning over legacy EpiPen users could be difficult. However, ARS’s short interest is 63% of its float, the highest on this list.

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9 Short Squeeze Stocks That Could Take Off originally appeared on usnews.com

Update 05/07/26: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.

As Trump accuses China of stealing voter data, Xi pitches China as a responsible tech leader

Beijing (CNN) — As US President Donald Trump accused Beijing of exploiting US election data in a televised speech in Washington, halfway across the world in China, Xi Jinping was sending a very different message.Beijing is a responsible global leader bent on shaping the future of technology for good, Xi intoned to hundreds of tech executives, researchers and industry figures gathering in Shanghai Friday for the opening of China’s flagship artificial intelligence summit.“With AI advancing at a staggering speed, we must ensure its development is for positive, for good, and for humanity,” Xi said in an opening address to the conference. “We must make its oversight and governance precise and effective and constantly refine measures to forestall loss of control.”Xi spoke minutes after Trump laid out a litany of claims against the Chinese government, including that it had illicitly acquired 220 million American voter files amid broader efforts to influence US elections. China has denied the allegations.The juxtaposition of the two messages illuminates the deepening faultlines and anxieties within the technological competition between the US and China, which the rapid rise of AI is only deepening.Xi’s message – a clear bid for China to helm the setting of global rules around AI – comes at a moment of fierce US-China competition over the technology, as well as intense concern about its national security implications, including AI’s ability to exploit software and database vulnerabilities.In his address, Xi hit back against “overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI” or “placing one country’s security over that of others” – veiled allusions to how Beijing sees the American approach to the technology.Instead, China has looked to push forward a message that the technology should be a “global public good” – and that it is willing to work with countries to develop it together.On the eve of the conference, China launched its World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), a new grouping of 29 countries, including Russia, Indonesia and Pakistan, friendly to China and its aims.“Xi sees AI as an opportunity to get more allies to compete with the US, not just in AI technology, but also in international relations – (this is) AI diplomacy,” said George Chen, the Hong Kong-based chair of digital practice at The Asia Group consultancy.China feels it missed the chance to set the rules on the global development of the world wide web over recent decades, he added, but the arrival of AI finds it in a much stronger position.“Thirty or forty years ago, China was a very poor country … but everybody knows today is different, and if AI is the new internet, China doesn’t want to miss the opportunity again.”Heated raceUS companies are widely seen to be racing to the frontier of the technology as their core strategy to win the competition. Their models still largely hold the lead in capabilities, as well as the hardware used to train and advance them.But that gap is narrowing. And when it comes to winning the AI race, Beijing is banking on a different tack: applying and scaling up AI technology in robotics and automation – as well as large-scale adoption globally, experts say.Chinese artificial intelligence firms like DeepSeek and Zhipu have made major leaps toward closing the performance gap with US firms.An increasing number of users around the world are also opting for their models’ open-source format and lower operating costs relative to Silicon Valley’s offerings.Chinese firms accounted for 20 of the daily top 50 AI models on OpenRouter in May, a platform which allows users to interact with a wide variety of models, up from only five at the start of 2025, according to an analysis by Our World In Data. Most others are American.Washington in recent months alleged that Chinese entities were engaging in “deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to distill US frontier AI,” referring to a process by which a smaller model trains off a larger one to improve its own capabilities.Earlier this month, a Chinese regulator warned it had identified ‌a serious security “backdoor” risk in US firm Anthropic’s Claude Code tool. Anthropic said the so-called backdoor was an experimental mechanism to track abuse of its platform and that access to it was not allowed in China.There are also deep-seated concerns in Washington that foreign actors could use powerful AI models to find and exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities in US critical infrastructure. The White House earlier this week launched an effort to address those.Beijing is also exploring potentially restricting overseas access to China’s most advanced AI models, Reuters reported earlier this month, citing sources.Both countries agreed to start an AI dialogue following a May summit between Trump and Xi in Beijing.Norm-setterThe strengthening foothold of Chinese AI models globally may help China’s ambitions to lead the technology’s proliferation and regulation.The conference in Shanghai shows both the extent and the limits of its reach, with limited involvement of American firms despite what state media called record attendance at this year’s event.Attendees of the four-day Shanghai conference include UN Secretary General António Guterres, nine Nobel laureates and Turing computing prize awardees, as well as more than 1,000 global enterprises, organizers said.This is the first time Xi has attended the flagship event since its launch in 2018, a clear signal of the importance Beijing attaches to AI and the mounting competition with the US to lead its future.Western analysts have raised concerns that Beijing’s expanding role setting global norms around AI will enable it to export the norms of its own highly restrictive media and internet environment.And there are questions around how much global interest Beijing can generate in its new WAICO international body.No major Western country will likely sign on to a China-controlled organization that will likely have a broad mandate for both the promotion of AI and AI governance and safety, according to Paul Triolo, a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group consultancy in Washington.“For the US, the main action will be building a credible bilateral dialogue with Beijing around frontier AI model governance,” he said.“Both sides must deal with complex bureaucratic challenges around the issue, and deep distrust on both sides.”The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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