Six months ago, we wrote about how AI-linked equities had redefined the securities lending landscape in 2025, a year shaped by speculative positioning, breakout IPOs, and the kind of volatility that provides opportunity for the market. The AI focus not only continued but expanded into 2026.

The AI trade has attracted a broader range of companies than anyone anticipated. When Allbirds, a footwear brand better known for its wool trainers than its computing power, announced it was exiting the shoe market to rebrand as SmartBird Inc and pivot to GPU-as-a-Service infrastructure, its share price rose over 580% in a single session. The EquiLend data captured the skepticism almost immediately, with borrowing activity rising more than 300% and fees spiking to over 20,000bps in the days following the announcement. A stark reminder that rebranding as an AI company and being accepted as one are very different things.

But beneath opportunism, the more substantive questions have sharpened. The market has moved from asking who will win the AI race to asking who can sustain it, and which established businesses are being disrupted by it. Those questions are visible in the lending data as clearly as anywhere. Here we look at three names that tell that story.