UiPath (UiPath (PATH)) shares took a hit on Wednesday, falling 5.54% to $9.45, even as the broader market rallied. The Nasdaq was up 1.40% and the S&P 500 gained 0.71%, but UiPath couldn't catch a bid. The stock is now flirting with its 52-week low of $9.27.
What's spooking investors? A one-two punch of rising short interest and fresh competitive fears. Short interest in UiPath has climbed to 115.09 million shares, up from 108.52 million, meaning about 31.49% of the company's float is now held short. At the current average daily volume of 22.27 million shares, it would take short sellers about 5.17 days to cover their positions. That's a lot of bearish bets.
The competitive worry du jour comes from Anthropic, which recently launched new agentic AI tools. The fear is that these tools could eat into UiPath's core business — automating repetitive workflows like claims processing, onboarding, and customer service. If Anthropic's AI can do that without UiPath's platform, where does that leave the automation leader?
UiPath isn't sitting still. On Tuesday, the company announced its "UiPath for Coding Agents" platform, which aims to bridge the gap between AI-generated code and enterprise governance. CEO Daniel Dines framed it as a natural evolution. "The emergence of coding agents signals a fundamental shift in the definition of a builder on our platform," Dines said. He added that the platform lets anyone "direct a coding agent to produce" automation that's enterprise-ready.
But the market seems unconvinced. The stock is still in a clear longer-term downtrend, trading about 10.3% below its 20-day simple moving average of $10.56, 13.6% below its 50-day of $10.96, and roughly 27.3% below its 200-day of $13.03. That's a lot of technical resistance.
All eyes are now on UiPath's first-quarter earnings report, due May 28. Analysts expect earnings per share of $0.13 on revenue of $397.47 million. Traders will be watching to see if UiPath's orchestration layer can hold its own against AI rivals like OpenAI and Google. For now, the bears are in control.
