The Bear Cave #282

New Activist Reports, Recent Resignations, and Tweets of the Week

Jul 13, 2025

Welcome to The Bear Cave! Our last premium articles were “More Problems at KinderCare (KLC)” and “Problems at 130 Long-Term Underperformers” and our next special investigation comes out this Thursday, July 17.

New Activist Reports

Grizzly Research published on Pony AI (NASDAQ: PONY — $4.54 billion), a Chinese autonomous driving systems company. Grizzly called the company “the worst of the robotaxi hype” and wrote that its “tech lags Waymo by at least three years,” said the company is not ready to deploy its technology in traffic heavy urban areas, and alleged a technical manager at the company “was exposed by a colleague for data falsification.” Grizzly added, in part,

“We tested the company’s robotaxis in available districts in China. Based on our experience, it appears PONY has the least pick-up spots, longest waiting time, and overall worse customer experience than the industry leader there. In our opinion, PONY is clearly losing against Chinese peers such as Baidu Apollo and WeRide.”

(The Bear Cave has no affiliation with Grizzly Research.)

Viceroy Research said it was short the debt of Vedanta Resources, the indebted parent and majority owner of Vedanta Limited (NSE: VEDL — 1.77 trillion rupees), a Mumbai-based natural resources conglomerate. Viceroy alleged that the group’s corporate governance “is defined by a pattern of misleading investors, neglecting core assets, and exploiting regulatory loopholes through auditor arbitrage” and highlighted how the parent companies and their subsidiaries use auditors previously sanctioned by regulators. Viceroy concluded,

“[Vedanta Resources] is a financial zombie being kept alive by transfusions of cash from its subsidiary VEDL. The short thesis is not death by a thousand cuts: Any one of the multitude of risks we outline is sufficient to topple Vedanta’s already fragile, Ponzi-like structure.”

Fugazi Research published on BitMine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR — $2.10 billion), a Bitcoin mining company with plans to launch an Ethereum treasury. Fugazi argued the company’s ~700% rise over the last month due to its Ethereum treasury plans is unjustified and highlighted that the company has a “public float of just 3.2 million shares while 62.3 million shares are outstanding,” most of which are owned by insiders at a cost basis of $4.50, ~88% below the current share price. Fugazi also highlighted that the company’s new corporate address is “an Atlanta hot desk space shared with a vape penny stock, a fish-farm SPAC, and a dead nutraceutical shell.”

Recent Resignations

Notable executive departures disclosed in the past week include:

CFO of NWTN Inc (NASDAQ: NWTN — $517 million) resigned “for personal reasons” with immediate effect after just six months. The UAE-based electric vehicle company has had five CFOs in the last two years. In May 2025, the company’s CEO resigned with four days’ notice after nine and a half years. In December 2024, three board members resigned and cited “concerns regarding corporate governance practices, transparency in communications, and challenges related to financial leadership.” In January 2025, the company switched auditors from Marcum Asia to ASSENTSURE PAC. According to PCAOB records, the specific audit partner responsible for NWTN, Mr. Su Chun Keat, has served as audit engagement partner for ten other public companies, all of which fell over 95% from their peaks or were delisted. NWTN Inc is down ~80% since its November 2022 SPAC merger.
CFO of AdvanSix (NYSE: ASIX — $620 million) was “terminated” effective immediately after just nine months. In March, the company switched Chief Accounting Officers as well.
CEO of Funko (NASDAQ: FNKO — $250 million) “departed” with immediate effect after a little over one year and also left the board. The toy collectables company has had five CEOs and four CFOs in the last five years and is down ~35% since its November 2017 IPO.
General Counsel of TransDigm Group (NYSE: TDG — $86.7 billion) “ceased serving as General Counsel” after two and a half years.

Data for this section is provided by VerityData from VerityPlatform.com

News of the Week

“Google's AI Overviews hit by EU antitrust complaint from independent publishers” (Reuters)

“‘Google's core search engine service is misusing web content for Google's AI Overviews in Google Search, which have caused, and continue to cause, significant harm to publishers, including news publishers in the form of traffic, readership and revenue loss,’ the document said.”

Three weeks ago The Bear Cave wrote that “the trend of direct AI-powered answers will become a headwind for other websites like Yelp (NYSE: YELP — $2.18 billion), Tripadvisor (NASDAQ: TRIP — $2.36 billion), NerdWallet (NASDAQ: NRDS — $789 million), and companies like Taboola (NASDAQ: TBLA — $1.17 billion), which provides programmatic ads on publisher websites. Read The Bear Cave’s ChatGPT Deep Research query on the subject here.”

“Challenger to FICO Credit Scores Gets Green Light for Use in Mortgages” (WSJ)

“Mortgage lenders can now use the VantageScore 4.0 model when originating loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which amount to nearly half of recent mortgage originations.”

The Bear Cave asked ChatGPT Deep Research about how loan originators view FICO (NYSE: FICO — $37.6 billion) and the competitive threat posed by VantageScore. Read the full response here and an excerpt below:

“In summary, between 2020 and 2025 customer sentiment and market indicators suggest that FICO’s once unassailable position is beginning to waver. Consumers continue to recognize FICO’s importance, but many have expressed frustration at the opacity of the scoring system and differences versus alternate scores. Enterprise customers – especially mortgage lenders – have grown openly dissatisfied with FICO’s pricing, seeing recent fee hikes as an abuse of its near-monopoly. This dissatisfaction has directly fueled support for alternatives. VantageScore has capitalized on the moment, rapidly expanding its usage and gaining official approval in arenas that were previously FICO-only strongholds. The data shows a sharp rise in VantageScore’s market presence (tens of billions of scores used yearly, and counting) alongside high-profile lender conversions (e.g. Synchrony’s switch, and others using internal scores over FICO).” (ChatGPT)

“Idea Brunch with Japan Guru” (Sunday’s Idea Brunch)