Transcript
0:00 Hey, welcome back subscribers. My name is Ali. This is my world of stocks and hey, welcome back to our weekend big buyer series where this time we're looking at none other than the infamous Cathie Wood who as you guys know is always one of the more kind of polarizing figures in the market mostly because of her laser focus on higher risk disruptive tech stocks. Well, with the broader market getting hit by a pretty sharp AI sell-off over especially this past like month or so where investors have been panicking over rising CapEx, interest rates, and memory costs, and whether these multi-billion dollar tech investments will actually even pay off for them. Well, Cathie Wood did what she always does. She jumps right back into the market to scoop up some of her favorite stocks on the dip.
0:49 And really I say dip, but these are some stocks here that are actually crashing down gigantic amounts from the highs from the very top. Well, today we're going to run through three of those most recent purchases from her equating to millions of dollars spent just this very month alone so far throughout October. And as always I will let you know if I agree with these purchases, if I think they are truly good pickups on the dip, or if I am choosing to stay far away myself. So, it's going to be a fun one. Hit that like button and let's just go ahead and jump straight into it, my friends.
1:26 All right. Now, first up here we've got an exciting AI energy play that's been getting brutally hammered in price lately and that is the SMR Pioneer Energy X Energy ticker symbol X E. Which Cathie just grabbed over 700,000 more shares of this month equating to somewhere around 7 and 1/2 million dollars. Now, pulling up the stock chart here we can see that XE just fell another more than 35% in just the past month alone which continues to continues the the horrendous performance really ever since their high profile IPO back in April. Where since then it's completely cratered in price losing over 70% of its entire value. So, why have investors been dumping the stock so aggressively? Well, you know, it really comes down to their current timeline and the heavy cash burn that continues to plague it all along the way.
2:21 Excuse me. Also, you while the long-term vision of nuclear energy powering AI data centers does sound extremely promising for the future. The thing is that X-Energy won't actually have its first commercial reactors operational until probably the early 2030s. And until that happens, they're basically going to continue to be seen by the market as simply an R&D and engineering company that is burning through a ton of cash. Now, sometimes that can actually be fine. It can actually work out for them because you know, much of the market does try to be more forward-looking whenever possible.
2:56 Whenever there's really enough hype to fuel those rallies. But the thing is that AI names came into the year already being so highly elevated up by so much that we're starting to see some of the fear and doubt of whether we climbed too high, too fast now creeping into these names. And because it's costing so many billions of dollars in CapEx, well, the less profitable names are always going to be the ones that get hit the hardest because you know, if spending drops and contracts start evaporating, well, these are the names that would have to dilute shareholders just to stay afloat and could always end up even going bankrupt in you know, the more the most like worst case scenarios. Now, I don't personally see that happening to X-Energy. But just so you're aware, this year alone analysts project their net loss to widen to over $430 million with negative free cash flow of close to half a billion, too. And so, in a market where investors are already so jittery about high-risk tech, well that kind of cash drain sends short-term traders rushing for the exits.
3:59 On the other hand, here's why Cathie is actually swooping in to buy the dip or the crash. Because if you zoom out a bit, tech giants are facing a looming energy crisis. AI data centers require an astronomical amount of 24/7 uninterrupted power that wind and solar simply won't be able to provide consistently around the clock. And so hyperscalers are realizing that, you know, advanced nuclear is really going to be the only kind of zero carbon solution that can scale up for them to the required size.
4:29 Well, you know, rather than spending around 15 years or so building gigantic power plants, X-energy chose to design their own small modular reactors instead that even use their own proprietary fuel, which unlike conventional reactors that use uranium rods cooled by water, well X uses helium gas-cooled pebbles coated in ceramic layers that can't even melt, thus helping prevent nuclear meltdowns altogether, which is obviously going to be a very big deal for pushing nuclear. Now, as we speak, they're building out their TH-1 fuel facility in Tennessee, which completed vertical construction last quarter, is on track to start commercial fuel fabrication by 2028. It's a good sign.
5:10 They already have huge backing. Amazon, for example, not only holds a major equity stake, but they partnered with X-energy to bring over 5 GW of SMR power online through 2039. Dow Chemical is deploying a four-reactor plant at their Texas facility with construction permits expected in early 2027, and Centrica is partnering with X-energy, too, for up to 6 GW in the UK, giving XE a future pipeline of roughly 11 and 1/2 GW across 144 reactors.
5:45 Excuse me, guys. One second. let me actually just get a quick sip of water. All right, sorry about that. So, where was I? Well, I guess the point I'm making is that there is obviously a ton of demand here for X Energy. And you know, again, having the backing of what is literally the largest data center operator in the entire world in Amazon, that's a very big It's a very justifiable reason to be optimistic about X-Energy's future, right? Well, in fact, on average, analysts still think that the stock price will more than double from its current lows. So, do I approve of Cathie buying the dip here, and am I buying shares myself?
6:31 Well, for Cathie's high-risk innovation-focused portfolio, I think it does make total sense. this is exactly the type of company and technology that you'd expect someone like her to be investing in. And I got to I got to say, the more that the stock falls, the more that my gut keeps telling me that I should absolutely be picking up here just a small kind of speculative piece of it for my own portfolio, too. just being transparent with you guys, the more it keeps falling, the more like the more it rises on my watch list, and the more I keep considering it. But the only reason why I haven't picked it up already myself is simply because I already own several different energy stocks already. some of which are very safe names like NextEra and Duke Energy, and some are a bit more speculative like the one that is actually coming up next. So, moving right along here to purchase number two, we actually have another high-profile name in the nuclear energy space, and that is the fast fission and clean power pioneer Oklo, ticker symbol OKLO.
7:39 Which Cathie also grabbed another close to 200,000 shares of across her funds spending over $5 million on it just during the month of October alone. Now, pulling up the stock chart here, we can see that Oklo has been on an absolute roller coaster ride over the past year where after being one of the hottest market darlings throughout 2025 it was actually around that time it was like literally like a nine bagger at one point. It was like red hot. But since then it has cratered off of those highs where it is now down close to 80% in just the past year and over 30% in just the past month alone. So, what is going on here? Well, it's basically the same story as X-Energy where you know tech investors got spooked about an AI bubble and rising interest rates with the first stocks to get abandoned being these higher risk pre-revenue names. Well, Oklo is still in its early operational stages too. In fact, analysts project their revenue this year to sit at just under $3 million while posting a net loss of over $162 million. So, when you have close to like a $5 billion market cap backed by less than like $3 million in current sales and heavy losses on the bottom line, yeah, short-term traders will likely panic sell at the first sign of trouble.
9:02 But why then is Cathie buying the crash? Well, unlike conventional nuclear reactors that cost over $10 billion and take again like 15 years or so to build, Oklo is developing compact Aurora Powerhouses which are basically modular micro reactors generating between 15 and 75 MW. And their design is totally different from legacy plants. Excuse me. >> >> Let me actually just grab one more sip of water.
9:32 So, yeah, speaking of their design, again, these are very different designs than legacy plants. instead of using water for cooling, Oklo uses liquid sodium, which allows the reactor to actually operate under much lower pressure at super high temperatures while using natural physics and heat circulation to even cool itself without needing external pumps. And even better, they run on metallic uranium fuel that can last for an entire decade without refueling. And they can even recycle used nuclear waste to generate even more power, too. That's all really fascinating tech, and unlike some other startups, Oklo just proved that they can actually build these things in the real world. down in Texas, their Groves 1 test facility, it just accomplished the the fastest privately funded reactor build in modern history, giving them a proven, repeatable blueprint for future commercial sites, too. On top of that, their commercial pipeline is already huge. Meta actually recently signed a deal with Oklo for a 1.2 gigawatt clean energy campus in Ohio to power their AI data centers. They have a 12-gigawatt agreement with Switch, a 500 megawatts with Equinix, and they're even partnering with the Department of Energy and tech leaders under a $200 million federal initiative to speed up nuclear deployment for AI, too.
10:56 best of all, Oklo actually has the balance sheet to survive the wait, as well. They ended last quarter with over $3 billion in cash and marketable securities with virtually no debt. And Wall Street is clearly taking notice of this discount. Across 23 analysts covering the stock, the average 12-month price target would see it would see nearly 200% gains from here. So, do I approve of Cathie buying this dip? Well, again, for Cathie's high-risk, innovation-focused style, I think it fits, you know, just about as good as many of her other stocks. And for me personally, well, I actually own a very small speculative position simply for the future of SMRs and nuclear energy as a whole. But again, I supplement that with the you know, much larger, safer energy positions in my portfolio that carry much greater weight as well.
11:46 They're they're much larger positions and far better, more profitable, safe obviously profitable, safer companies. this one here is only a tiny piece by comparison. But it is one that I still like for the very long term. I want to kind of bet on it. And I think it does hold a lot of promise with again some serious backing, too. And really just like, you know, not to go off on a on a tan on a tangent or rant here, but just, you know, being able to put these like small reactors near the data center sites where they're actually needed combined with the the smaller scale, the speed of deployment, the renewable functions of them, all of it, I think is just going to be a bit of a game-changer in terms of energy and that being used for AI, you know, well into the future. So, that's what I like about it. But again, the keyword there is future. Not today, not anytime very soon, but for over the longer term.
12:38 All right, that brings us now though to the third purchase. And this was actually her largest of the three, where we have the AI cloud specialist CoreWeave, ticker symbol CRWV. Which Kathy has been going super heavy on recently, spending nearly $46 million across her funds to scoop up over 825,000 shares just during this past month alone. Now, if you've been watching the headlines lately, you know that CoreWeave has been almost like ground zero for the recent tech panic and sell-off, where it's now lost close to 40% of its value in just the past month alone and a staggering well over half its entire value from the very top, too.
13:24 Which is in dramatic contrast to the high-flying performance that they saw soon after IPO last year. Well, once again, we have a big AI sell-off that actually has very little to do with customer demand and almost everything to do with their balance sheet and the debt market. See, unlike traditional hyperscalers that have massive advertising or software profits to to help fund their data centers, a CoreWeave is a pure-play neo cloud operator. Meaning they build out high-performance data centers packed with Nvidia GPUs, and then they lease out that specialized computing power to various AI labs and enterprises. Well, to quickly build out that capacity, which is, you know, super important by the way, like you really want to be able to capitalize on all of the insane demand that you're seeing right now as fast as possible. Well, in order to do that, or as a result of that, they've had to borrow heavily for it, and that's racking up roughly $50 billion in total debt for them. And recently yields on CoreWeave's bonds on the secondary market spiked all the way to 15 and 16%. Now, to put that in a perspective, when secondary yields surge that high, Wall Street starts to really classify that debt as, like, you know, {quote} unquote distressed. Meaning bond traders are getting nervous that CoreWeave won't be able to handle its financing costs. Now, last quarter, for example, net interest expense alone surged to $640 million, eating up roughly a quarter of their total revenue. And shortly after, analysts at Bernstein downgraded the stock to underperform, warning that CoreWeave may need around $85 billion in capital just to fund its entire build-out. So, you combine the insane amount of money required just for their business to be operational with the high interest costs that come from all that borrowing in our, obviously, in our current high-rate environment, too, to make make it even worse, with also the fears of future dilution because of it. And the result is that the market just simply panic sold the stock to wash your hands clean of, I guess, the entire mess, if you want to call it that. But here's the other side to of that coin, and it's a big one. The reason why Kathy Wood has been so aggressively buying the crash here is because while Wall Street is freaking out over the debt, the underlying demand for Coreweave's computing platform has been soaring through the roof. A last quarter, for example, revenue skyrocketed by 112% year-over-year, at $2.6 billion.
16:06 While adjusted EBITDA climbed to $1.5 billion at a 59% margin. In fact, these operations could technically be very high margin for them if it wasn't for all of the insane CapEx that is initially required to build it all out. In fact, according to Seeking Alpha, Coreweave stock would technically be trading around 30% lower than the sector median, and around 80% cheaper on operating cash flow, too. But again, the reason for that is because sales and operating cash flow don't take into account the gigantic CapEx. So, even if we wanted to value this stock based on, like, you know, net income or free cash flow, which would be a lot more accurate accurate or appropriate in this case to to really know kind of the true value here, well, we wouldn't even be able to do that because they lose billions of dollars on the bottom line every single year. But again, it just shows that if it wasn't for that massive CapEx, all that heavy spending that they have to initially do, this would actually be a very high margin business trading at what would probably be a huge discount after this giant crash that the stock has gone through, which I assume is Kathy's kind of bullish view on is probably her main argument for it. And it's not a super crazy one, by the way. Like when you consider the gigantic demand and the backlog and they've got a huge backlog backlog that surged by another 246% to an unbelievable 104 billion dollars worth, which management noted that it doesn't even include another 25 billion in new customer commitments that were signed in early Q3 as well. And so the long-term goal here, I assume is to get these data centers completely built out, operational, up and running, and eventually reach a point where you can start to cut back on all that spending and simply keep them keep these data centers these massive data centers up and running with new hardware and upgrades whenever those are required.
18:13 Which by the way, this is a stock that is even owned by Nvidia. It's a big investor who's also a strategic partner. So having that backing and being able to get early access to Nvidia's best products because of it, that is a bit of a differentiator for them, too. And it is I feel like it kind of just helps them stand out a little bit, too, in what is becoming a much more crowded field over time for for what they do. Now time will tell who ultimately ends up being right about all of this, the bulls, the bears, or you know, anyone else. But as for me personally, it's not a stock that I own myself, at least not yet, but you know, it's simply because I just already have so many like AI data center stocks as it is that I have tons of exposure to similar things that Coreweave does, even but also just kind of like adjacent markets too, and it's all a little bit too much for me. I already have my well-diversified large profitable names and I sleep really well at night owning those, whereas Coreweave, I think I'd be maybe a little stressed out about owning, but but it I wouldn't say that it's not worth to making a bet on, and certainly for Cathie Wood, I think it fits the bill for her, you know, again, wanting those more higher-risk, big tech-heavy names that you know, she tends to like stocks that are going down in price and and tries to find value in that as well. I think she really looks for big rebound opportunities longer term as well.
19:40 Again, I'm not like defending her or or her strategies or anything like that. I'm just saying like that's kind of what I I think that that's what she really looks for. And for her, I think a a name like this does kind of make sense. But for me personally, it's just not one that really fits my portfolio at this time. But hey, I will say for what it's worth, of the 41 analysts covering the stock, they still see over 150% upside from current levels. So, you know, take that how you will.
20:11 Anyway, there you have it, guys. those are three crashing AI stocks that Cathie Wood has been buying heavily during this recent tech sell-off. clearly, ARK is placing some huge bets on the future of energy and competing infrastructure. But as you saw, while I'm holding on to my small speculative position in Oklo, I'm personally passing on the other two for now, even though I do find them to be very interesting plays. But what do you guys think? Are you buying the dip on any of these stocks, or are you staying far away on the sidelines? Drop your thoughts down in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you. And hey, if you enjoyed the video, please hit that like button, get subscribed so you don't miss future content. But thank you thank you again so much for stopping by, my friends. I hope you're all doing well.
20:55 Got more videos coming for you soon, so stay tuned. I'll catch you guys in the next one. All right, take care, everybody. Bye-bye. >> >> Hey.