There was a flurry of trading activity at Ark Invest on Monday. The aggressive growth family of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) started the new week of trading with the busiest day of 2026 by the number of shares bought.
With Cathie Wood at the helm, Ark is always on the lookout for price differentials. Recent volatility will bring out the buyer in Ark Invest, co-founder and CEO.
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Of the several stocks that Wood was buying for Ark on Monday, three names that stand out to me are CoreWeave(NASDAQ: CRWV), Datadog(NASDAQ: DOG)and Circle Internet Group(NYSE: CRCL). All three were previous positions in her ETFs. Let’s take a closer look at three new acquisitions.
Image source: Getty Images.
CoreWeave is one of two stocks in Wood’s shopping bag that weren’t even publicly traded a year ago. The artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure play hit the market at $40 a share in March. After a slow start, investors flocked to CoreWeave’s story and potential.
As a hyperscaler, CoreWeave provides data center solutions optimized for resource-intensive AI workloads. Shares were expected to trade as high as $187 over the summer, but are currently trading for less than half that.
CoreWeave stock has an interesting origin story. It was started by hedge fund traders who raised money to buy GPUs to mine crypto. It was a side business while they worked.
After a particularly challenging cryptocurrency crash a few years ago, hedge fund managers were at a crossroads: cut their losses and sell their GPUs, or take advantage of the fact that many people are thinking the same thing and make the most of fire sales to expand their arsenals? They chose the latter and it paid off.
At the time, they thought they could harness the power of their GPUs to help film studios make special effects and potentially ride the early wave of AI. Once again, choosing the latter paid off. Not going Hollywood opened up the more lucrative realm of the hyperscaler revolution.
Bottom line revenue tripled for CoreWeave. That kind of growth isn’t sustainable, but it’s not too bad to target 136% growth for 2026. With orders nearly doubling in the past year — to $55.6 billion — it’s happening for a company with just $4.6 billion in bottom line revenue.
The good news is that Datadog has tripled since going public in 2019. The bad news is that almost all of the jump happened in the first two years of trading. Shares of the enterprise software provider, which offers cloud monitoring and other business technology modules, have risen less than 30% over the past five years. Recent investors have it even worse, as Datadog shares have lost 36% of their value since peaking in October.
Many software companies have reset their valuations down over the past few weeks as investors ponder the disruptive nature of AI as a coding platform. However, even before the investment community began treating AI as a tailwind rather than an opportunity, Datadog and many of its peers saw their growth rates decline.
Datadog’s revenue has grown 27% over the past four quarters. This would be respectable for most companies, but Datadog has typically seen growth of over 60% in its first few years of trading. Datadog has failed to top 30% in revenue growth in each of the past three years, and analysts see the business slowing to 21% growth in the year that just started.
Datadog continues to provide an essential toolbox for its customers. Wood probably hopes the stock selloff won’t last.
Finally, we have another company in a niche that — like Datadog — is facing near-term pressures. Like CoreWeave, Circle Internet Group went public in 2025. It hit the market in June at an IPO price of $31. The stock would go on to become a near 10-bagger within weeks, but the stock has fallen 80% since that frothy peak.
Circle is an issuer of stablecoin products. It also provides blockchain solutions for the crypto industry. The recently cooling market in digital currencies is problematic in the short term.
Circle was starting to gain momentum, seeing revenue growth accelerate from 53% in the second quarter to 66% in the third, its first full quarter as a public company. The stock still trades well above its original IPO price, but the massive discount from its summer high makes it a tempting buy for Wood right now.
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Rick Munarriz has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Datadog. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Cathie Wood Goes Bargain Hunting: 3 Stocks She Just Bought was originally published by The Motley Fool
