Weekly Wrap Up: Sunday, May 3, 2026

Five activist reports landed in five days, and Blaize Holdings (BZAI) absorbed two of them in 72 hours. Pelican Way Research opened the volley Tuesday on a $70 million contract whose Chinese counterparty had only about $2 million in self-reported capital. Two days later, White Diamond Research piled on with a third short report on the same name.

Grizzly Research weighed in on $184 billion Swiss alternative asset manager Partners Group, alleging close to 40 percent of its evergreen fund holdings may be severely mismarked. Partners Group fired back the next day, calling the report defamatory and weighing legal action. Hunterbrook took aim at Hamilton Lane's accounting changes, and Bleecker Street Research questioned whether SharonAI's $1.25 billion anchor contract is fundable from the counterparty's operations. The week's other regulatory beat: Spain's CNMV is now criminally charging Gotham City Research over its 2024 Grifols report, effectively for publishing 75 minutes before the open.

• Hunterbrook Media targeted Hamilton Lane (HLNE) alleging accounting changes lifted reported FRE margin from ~32% to ~59%. Stock closed the week down 2.4%.
• Pelican Way Research targeted Blaize Holdings (BZAI) alleging a $70M contract counterparty was incorporated four days after its website was registered, with only ~$2M in capital. Stock closed the week down 6.0%.
• Grizzly Research targeted Partners Group (PGHN) alleging close to 40% of evergreen fund holdings may be severely mismarked. Stock closed the week down 4.2%.
• White Diamond Research targeted Blaize Holdings (BZAI) with the third short report on the name in nine months, citing the Starshine precedent and the new NeoTensr deal. Stock closed the week up 6.3% off a multi-month low.
• Bleecker Street Research targeted SharonAI (SHAZ) alleging the $1.25B anchor contract requires annual payments ~6.3x the counterparty's fiscal 2025 revenue. Stock closed the week down 7.6%.

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New Activist Reports

Hunterbrook Media on Hamilton Lane (HLNE)

Stock Price Impact HLNE traded down to an intraday low of $87.87, off 7.4% from the prior close, before recovering to finish at $89.46 (down 5.7%). Buyers stepped in across the balance of the week and the stock closed Friday at $92.56, finishing 2.4% lower over five sessions. The muted weekly move suggests the market read Hunterbrook's allegations as accounting and disclosure issues rather than fundamentals breaking, though the steep intraday low shows the report did register on day one.

About The Company Hamilton Lane is a NASDAQ-listed private markets investment firm. The company runs evergreen vehicles for retail investors, including its flagship Private Assets Fund (PAF), which managed roughly $3.6 billion at fiscal 2025 close. The firm is led by co-CEOs Erik Hirsch and Juan Delgado-Moreira and earns revenue primarily from management and performance fees on its funds. Hamilton Lane benefits from "day-one markups" on secondary interests, an accounting shortcut allowing newly acquired stakes purchased at a discount to fair value to be marked up immediately.

Key Points from the Report

• According to Hunterbrook, day-one markups account for roughly a third of total valuation gains across PAF's portfolio rather than appreciation of the underlying companies. New secondary positions are marked up to fair value the same quarter they are added.
• Two simultaneous reporting changes moved the FRE margin from ~32% to ~59% for the nine months ending December 2025: adding performance fees on unrealized NAV gains as revenue, and excluding stock-based comp from expenses.
• Roughly six months before the stock-based comp exclusion, co-CEOs Hirsch and Delgado-Moreira each received 544,000 restricted shares, grants valued at ~$71 million apiece with vesting tied to stock price targets.
• PAF's annual returns compressed from 20.8% in fiscal 2022 ($330M AUM) to 12.6% in fiscal 2025 ($3.6B AUM). Assets grew roughly tenfold while returns nearly halved.

Read the Full Report Summary →

Pelican Way Research on Blaize Holdings (BZAI)

Stock Price Impact BZAI traded down hard on April 28, hitting an intraday low of $1.80 (off 16.7%) before steadying to $1.90, down 12.0% on the day. The stock then absorbed a second short report from White Diamond two days later and closed the week at $2.03, down 6.0%. The 16.7% intraday drop is a meaningful day-of reaction for a low-priced name, signaling the China-counterparty allegations registered with traders despite an already depressed level.

About The Company Blaize is a NASDAQ-listed AI hardware company that markets edge computing infrastructure. The company reported approximately $38.6 million in revenue for fiscal 2025, with nearly the entire amount coming from just two customers, both based in China. Blaize ended 2025 with roughly $45.8 million in cash while burning approximately $74 million per year. The company has structured its growth around large announced contracts, including a $120 million deal with Starshine Computing in 2025 and a deal of up to $70 million with NeoTensr announced in April 2026.

Key Points from the Report

• Pelican Way alleges NeoTensr was created for the deal itself: the website was registered December 18, 2025, the company was incorporated four days later, and the deal of up to $70 million was announced April 16, 2026. Chinese filings show NeoTensr reported only ~$2 million in self-reported capital.
• An April 14 Blaize press release stated $20 million in NeoTensr revenue was recognized in Q4 2025. The report questions how hardware delivery, which under Blaize's stated revenue policy requires transfer of control, could have occurred within weeks of NeoTensr's incorporation.
• The report alleges NeoTensr's product pages display third-party hardware with logos overlaid. The "NEO MESH 1L-E" featured on the NeoTensr site appears to be an AIC OB127-LX storage server with logos applied via photoshop or stickers.
• Blaize ended 2025 with ~$45.8 million in cash while burning ~$74 million annually. Pelican Way estimates roughly four months of remaining runway and points to existing dilution channels including a B. Riley equity facility and a November 2025 Polar Asset Management deal.

Read the Full Report Summary →

Grizzly Research on Partners Group Holding AG (PGHN.SW)

Stock Price Impact PGHN traded down to an intraday low of CHF 848.60 (off 4.1%) and closed the day at CHF 849.60, down 4.0%. The stock drifted to CHF 848.00 by Friday, settling 4.2% lower for the week. The contained move on a name of this size, roughly $25 billion in market cap, is notable. Grizzly's allegations target valuation methodology rather than the operating business directly, which may have tempered the day-one reaction. Partners Group's strong counter-statement the next day also stabilized the stock.

About The Company Partners Group is a Swiss-listed alternative asset manager with approximately $184.9 billion in AUM as of year-end 2025, one of Europe's largest. The firm is widely credited with pioneering evergreen investment vehicles, which bring private equity and private credit to retail investors. Its flagship US evergreen fund, the Master Fund, holds approximately $15.9 billion in NAV of the firm's $56 billion total evergreen program. Partners Group earns most of its revenue from management and performance fees across private equity, private debt, infrastructure, and real estate.

Key Points from the Report

• Grizzly estimates close to 40% of the evergreen funds' investments may be severely mismarked. After reviewing the firm's analysis, one forensic compliance expert told Grizzly the situation could prove worse than Wirecard.
• The Master Fund discloses holding 26,838,037 shares of Hong Kong-based Zenith Longitude Limited at $322 million. Zenith's own Hong Kong filing records the same fund as holding 76,288,162 shares, a 50 million share discrepancy.
• Over the six months from March 31 to September 30, 2025, the Master Fund marked its position in Ciddan S.à r.l. up 12.0%. During that window, the Russian government transferred 100% ownership of Ciddan's underlying asset, pharmaceutical maker JSC Nizhpharm, to a state-managed entity by Presidential decree.
• Grizzly identifies multiple positions where reported markups diverge from operating performance: Swedish data-center operator Green DC marked up 176.9% as revenue fell 17.6%; Portuguese biocontrol firm Rovensa Group marked up 857.8% against just 2.9% revenue growth; PG Investment Company 88 marked up 383.1% within 26 days of acquisition.

Partners Group has publicly disputed the report's findings (see the Newswire below).

Read the Full Report Summary →

White Diamond Research on Blaize Holdings (BZAI)

Stock Price Impact This is the third short report on Blaize in nine months and the second this week. BZAI traded to an intraday low of $1.74 (off 8.9%) before reversing to finish at $1.96, up 2.6% on the day. The stock ticked up to $2.03 by Friday, finishing the week 6.3% higher from the report-day base. The bounce reflects two things: BZAI was already near multi-month lows after Pelican Way's report two days earlier, and White Diamond's findings rehash themes already in the market.

About The Company This is the third short report on Blaize Holdings in nine months. White Diamond's report builds on Ragnarok Research's August 2025 report (which White Diamond states was published under threat) and Pelican Way Research's report of April 28, 2026. Blaize markets itself as an AI infrastructure provider, announcing multi-million-dollar contracts to deploy AI edge computing across Asia, including a $120 million agreement with Starshine Computing in July 2025 and a contract of up to $50 million with NeoTensr in April 2026. White Diamond contends very little cash has actually been collected against these announcements.

Key Points from the Report

• White Diamond points to consistent, large-scale insider selling alongside quarterly losses exceeding $20 million on what the firm describes as unexplained spending. Legitimate revenue is "close to zero" once the disputed Asian customer contracts are excluded.
• Blaize announced the $120 million Starshine deal on July 17, 2025. The report states the company has reported receiving only $1.6 million of that amount, a realization rate of roughly 1.3%. Starshine is described as "proved to be a fraud."
• White Diamond alleges Blaize is repeating the Starshine playbook with NeoTensr: a $50 million contract announced April 16 under a near-identical headline, $20 million in Q4 2025 revenue with no cash received, and a counterparty whose only known employee is a CEO with no public history outside Blaize's own press releases.
• White Diamond states Blaize management has not publicly responded to either the Ragnarok or Pelican Way report. The firm claims Ragnarok received threats over its publication, prompting Ragnarok to take its report down and White Diamond to repost it.

Read the Full Report Summary →

Bleecker Street Research on SharonAI Holdings (SHAZ)

Stock Price Impact SHAZ saw classic intraday volatility on April 30. The stock crashed to a low of $39.74 (off 13.0%) before staging a remarkable recovery to finish flat at $46.00, up 0.7% on the day. The bounce did not hold. SHAZ rolled over Friday to close at $42.21, finishing the week down 7.6%. The wide intraday range is typical of a recently SPAC-merged name, and the second-day fade suggests Bleecker Street's allegations got more thorough scrutiny once the initial squeeze unwound.

About The Company SharonAI markets itself as a leading Australian neocloud, providing high-performance computing and GPU cloud infrastructure for AI workloads. The Delaware-incorporated parent reached the public market through a December 2025 SPAC merger with Roth CH Acquisition Co., followed by a $125 million Nasdaq uplist offering completed in February 2026. SharonAI is a certified NVIDIA Cloud Partner and is led by Chairman and CEO James Manning, who previously founded Mawson Infrastructure Group. The company positions itself as the Asia Pacific answer to U.S. neoclouds such as CoreWeave and Nebius.

Key Points from the Report

• SharonAI's $1.25 billion, five-year anchor contract with ESDS Software Solutions rests on a counterparty that reported $39.9 million in fiscal 2025 revenue and ~$5.8 million in net profit. The contract obligates ESDS to annual payments averaging $250 million and requires it to post $140 million in letters of credit, exceeding ESDS's total fiscal 2025 assets of ~$69.5 million.
• ESDS's largest customer, ~20% of fiscal 2025 revenue, is Russia's Gazprombank, on the U.S. OFAC SDN list since November 2024. ESDS markets Indian data sovereignty and serves 400+ banking customers subject to RBI localization rules, which Bleecker Street argues cannot legally be served from Australia.
• SharonAI's largest disclosed funding source is a $500 million debt facility from USD.AI, a DeFi protocol launched out of private beta in late 2025. USD.AI's Proof of Reserves page shows ~$284 million available against ~$1.2 billion in announced approvals, with the protocol operated by the same team behind a collapsed NFT-lending protocol.
• CEO James Manning's prior public company, Mawson Infrastructure Group, is suing him in federal court over alleged self-dealing including the routing of ~A$11.5 million through Flynt ICS, now a disclosed SharonAI vendor. Two former Mawson personnel hold senior roles at SharonAI, and the supervoting structure that entrenched Manning at Mawson, ~65% of votes against 1% of economics, has been replicated.

Read the Full Report Summary →

Activ8 Newswire

• Spain criminally charges Gotham City Research over Grifols report – The CNMV is pursuing Cyrus de Weck and Dan Yu over their January 2024 report, with Carson Block of Muddy Waters telling FT Alphaville the prosecution is "obviously political." The complaint argues that publishing 75 minutes before the open did not give the market enough time. Source: Financial Times
• Wolfpack's POET Technologies short pays off after Marvell pulls orders – A week after Wolfpack's bearish report on AI optics name POET Technologies prompted POET's CFO to call short sellers "maggots," Marvell canceled its purchase orders citing a confidentiality breach by the CFO. POET shares fell roughly 47% in a single session. Source: Business Insider
• Partners Group condemns Grizzly Research report as defamatory – In an ad-hoc filing the day after Grizzly's report dropped, Partners Group called the publication "frivolous, defamatory, and highly misleading," disputed claims around Zenith Longitude and Ciddan, and said it is evaluating legal action including potential market manipulation reports to regulators. Source: Finimize