Scan the Nasdaq stocks hitting 52-week lows this week and a pattern jumps out: many of the biggest names build, power or rent space for artificial intelligence. Few of these businesses are shrinking. Several reported record revenue in recent weeks, and their shares kept sliding anyway.
The reason has less to do with earnings than with money and politics, and both turned sharply worse over the past month.
Credit Fears Hit the AI Builders First
The first shock came from the bond market. CoreWeave has taken on more than $51 billion of debt and obligations to build its AI infrastructure, CNBC reported on October 15. By October 21, CNBC said, its shares were down 36% for the month, and the spread on its five-year credit default swaps, a measure of the cost of insuring its debt, had reached 1,145 basis points. Barclays credit analyst Andrew Keches told clients that sentiment toward AI bonds was “decidedly negative.”
Readers weighing the pullback can read our analysis of whether CoreWeave’s recent drop is a buying opportunity.
More pressure followed. Elon Musk said more than 200 neoclouds, the companies that rent out AI computing power, would see “guppy-level death and consolidation,” CNBC reported on October 26. Two days later, Microsoft reported capital spending below analyst estimates and said some third-party capacity it expected had been delayed, CNBC reported on October 28. Neocloud stocks fell again.
A New Political Risk Arrives in Washington
Then came the election. Reuters reported on November 4 that Wall Street closed sharply higher after Democrats won Congress, but data center shares fell on fears of tighter AI regulation. Democrats made gains in Texas and Georgia, where public opposition to the industry’s rapid expansion has been growing.
The market split in two. Shares of cash-rich AI heavyweights rose, while chipmakers and data center operators fell: Hut 8 lost 23%, IREN 11%, Core Scientific 10% and Applied Digital 6.7%. Citi Research’s head of US equity strategy, Scott Chronert, said any change in the pace of the buildout alters the outlook for many of those suppliers.
We also wrote about how leverage turned an AI bet into a fire sale for one fund.
The pressure carried into the next day. UBS analysts estimated that around 30% of expected US data center capacity additions in 2028 could be at risk from potential construction pauses, Reuters reported on November 5. Large technology companies, by contrast, rose on the view that a slower buildout would curb their own spending, Reuters said.
Photo by Pascal Bernardon on Unsplash
Our Methodology
For this article, we used Finviz to screen for NASDAQ-listed stocks that hit a new 52-week low as of November 5, 2026. We then checked how many of the 107 billionaires we track held each stock as of Q2 2026, and ranked the 10 with the most billionaire holders in ascending order. We also list each stock’s number of hedge fund holders as of Q2 2026, from our database of 1,006 hedge funds.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Insider Monkey’s quarterly newsletter strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 599.2% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 372 percentage points (see more details here).
10 Best 52-Week Low NASDAQ Stocks to Buy According to Billionaires
10. IREN (NASDAQ:IREN)
Number of Billionaire Holders: 16
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 69
The sell-off in IREN began with a forecast, not a failure. Gartner predicted that 80% of neocloud companies will be absorbed or stop operating by 2030, CNBC reported, and Elon Musk soon warned that more than 200 of them face consolidation. IREN had already dropped 40% in a month by then. Reuters said the shares fell another 11% after the midterm elections raised fears of tighter oversight of data centers.
Bulls say the contracts tell a different story. The company is turning bitcoin-mining sites into AI data centers, and it signed a $9.7 billion deal with Microsoft. In its latest annual results, it reported $4 billion of annualized revenue contracted for 2026 capacity and said that capacity was largely sold out. Customers have also been prepaying, covering 45% to 55% of the cost of new chips, which eases some of the borrowing worry hanging over the group. If customers keep prepaying and the capacity stays sold out, bulls argue the company can fund growth without leaning as hard on lenders, which is the very worry weighing on neocloud shares.
We covered how IREN swapped bitcoin rigs for Microsoft GPU contracts if you want the backstory.
9. NewAmsterdam Pharma (NASDAQ:NAMS)
Number of Billionaire Holders: 18
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 45
NewAmsterdam Pharma sank to a new low late last month even after winning the first approval of its cholesterol drug anywhere. The company has no drug sales yet, so its value rides on one question: whether obicetrapib, a once-daily pill that lowers LDL cholesterol, cuts heart attacks and strokes. That answer comes from PREVAIL, a trial that randomized more than 9,500 patients. An interim analysis is planned for this quarter, with a result expected in early 2027, and investors are waiting.
Bulls like how much has already gone right. The European Commission approved obicetrapib alone and combined with ezetimibe, the first approval worldwide, and its partner Menarini helped lift third-quarter revenue to $19.2 million through regulatory milestones. NewAmsterdam ended September with $643.1 million in cash and has started a new study in preclinical Alzheimer’s disease. That cash gives it room to wait for the trial data. A positive PREVAIL result would give the pill a stronger case with patients whose cholesterol stays high despite treatment.
Our earlier coverage of how EU approvals could turn into royalties for NewAmsterdam looks at the revenue side.
8. Applied Digital (NASDAQ:APLD)
Number of Billionaire Holders: 18
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 59
Applied Digital’s stock fell hard when its chief executive said out loud what the market already feared: building data centers takes a lot of money that has not yet been raised. Wes Cummins told CNBC that about 800 megawatts of capacity still needs financing over the next 12 months, and that higher interest rates have raised borrowing costs. Last quarter, interest expense of $77.4 million was larger than the $65.8 million the company collected in base rent. Shares fell again after the midterms, Reuters reported.
Bulls focus on the contracts behind the build. Applied Digital has leases for about 1.41 gigawatts across five campuses, representing roughly $36 billion of contracted revenue over the initial terms, with tenants that include CoreWeave and investment-grade hyperscalers. Revenue rose 322% to $341.9 million last quarter, and the Polaris Forge 1 campus in North Dakota has 250 megawatts running. The argument is that once financing closes, rent from long leases should start to cover the debt. Bulls see financing as a question of when, not whether, given how much rent is already contracted.
Short sellers have noticed too, as our report on Applied Digital’s short interest shows.
7. PureCycle Technologies (NASDAQ:PCT)
Number of Billionaire Holders: 19
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 40
PureCycle has a plant that works and customers that are slow to arrive. The company turns used polypropylene into a resin it sells for branded packaging, but third-quarter revenue slid to $2.3 million from $4.5 million in the second quarter. It blamed operating problems at its Ironton plant and New Jersey’s decision to extend a food-contact exemption, which pushed a group of food-contact programs into 2027 and beyond.
Bulls say the setbacks are timing, not demand. Ironton produced more resin than in the second quarter, and the company says the production problems have been resolved. It has moved its sales push to non-food uses, where a January 2027 compliance date still applies, and branded programs in progress are expected to reach 45 million to 55 million pounds a year. Total available liquidity of $393 million and lower planned spending in 2027 give it more time to prove the point. In their view, a plant that now runs better matters more than one weak quarter of revenue, especially with funding in place.
Readers who want the regulatory side can find it in our look at PureCycle’s regulatory tailwinds and execution risk.
6. Fermi (NASDAQ:FRMI)
Number of Billionaire Holders: 19
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 57
Fermi has a huge plan and a thin record of turning it into rent. The company wants to build a giant power and data center campus in the Texas Panhandle, and its first prospective tenant walked away late last year. A $6.5 billion, 15-year lease with TensorWave for 222 megawatts followed this summer. But the lease did not take effect by its closing deadline last week because conditions were still unmet, and the shares fell. A regulatory filing also said Fermi’s cash would not cover the next 12 months without more financing.
Bulls point to AMD, which signed a credit support agreement for the lease, and to the company’s statement that the parties are still working toward closing. Fermi calls the AMD backing a key step toward project financing. The lease also lets the tenant expand the partnership to more than 650 megawatts, so a closed deal could grow well beyond the first building. That makes the closing, and the financing that follows, the event the stock now trades on.
You might also be interested in reading our piece on how a landmark power deal puts Fermi’s big bet to the test.
5. INNIO (NASDAQ:INIO)
Number of Billionaire Holders: 19
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 55
INNIO’s stock tumbled after the best quarter in its history. The company makes the gas engines that let a data center generate its own power instead of waiting years for a grid connection, so a slower buildout hits it directly. Reutersreported that UBS analysts estimate about 30% of expected US data center capacity additions in 2028 could be at risk from construction pauses, a worry that grew once Democrats won Congress.
The bulls’ case sits in the order book. Revenue rose 57% to a record $1.2 billion, and the equipment backlog reached $8.0 billion, with most of the growth coming from data center deliveries. Management raised its full-year outlook. Chief executive Olaf Berlien said the company is scaling capacity to meet accelerating demand for AI infrastructure, and a 620-megawatt follow-on order from a data center developer came in during the quarter. Bulls add that even if some projects pause, a backlog of that size gives the company a long runway of deliveries already committed.
For more on who is buying those engines, see our piece on a 450-megawatt order for INNIO’s gas engines.
4. Cerebras Systems (NASDAQ:CBRS)
Number of Billionaire Holders: 21
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 78
Cerebras fell after a single report. Research firm SemiAnalysis said OpenAI would run the “Ultrafast” mode of its newest model on Nvidia chips instead of Cerebras hardware, and CNBC reported that the stock dropped nearly 20% that week, to its lowest since the May IPO, as insider lockups expired and more shares reached the market. OpenAI is a large piece of Cerebras’s future, so the news stung. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman soon responded by calling Cerebras a close partner.
Bulls lean on what is already contracted. At the end of June, Cerebras held $25.4 billion in contracted work still to be delivered, and its core revenue of $209.9 million more than doubled from a year earlier. Its cloud business grew 287%, and management said it plans to more than triple revenue in 2027. AWS, AMD and CrowdStrike are among its customers and partners, which widens the list beyond OpenAI. Bulls add that Altman’s response suggests the relationship with its biggest customer remains intact despite the headline.
That backlog is the subject of our look at how Cerebras could turn it into high-margin growth.
3. CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV)
Number of Billionaire Holders: 23
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 71
CoreWeave’s problem is the price of money, not a lack of customers. The company rents out Nvidia chips and has taken on more than $51 billion of debt and obligations to build capacity. Bond yields near 15% and a jump in the cost of insuring that debt helped drive the stock down 36% in October, CNBC reported. Neocloud shares, which Reuters called a barometer of worry over AI spending, slid again after the midterm elections.
Bulls keep pointing to what customers have already signed. Second-quarter revenue rose 112%, and revenue backlog stood at about $104 billion, a figure that left out more than $25 billion in new commitments added early in the third quarter. Nvidia, which supplies the chips, also invested in the company in January. Management raised its 2026 revenue forecast, so the debate now is how fast those contracts can turn into cash. Bulls add that the backlog gives lenders something concrete to underwrite, which they argue should ease the funding pressure over time as customers begin paying.
Whether that balance sheet can carry the load is a question we explored for CoreWeave.
2. Core Scientific (NASDAQ:CORZ)
Number of Billionaire Holders: 24
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 75
Core Scientific touched a 52-week low on the very day it reported third-quarter results. The company is turning former bitcoin mines into data centers that lease power and space to AI customers, and that conversion eats cash. Capital spending reached $985.1 million in the quarter. When data center stocks tumbled after the midterm elections, Core Scientific fell 10%, Reuters reported.
The bulls’ answer is that the spending is turning into revenue. Colocation revenue jumped nearly 60% from the prior quarter to $215.4 million, and adjusted EBITDA more than tripled. The company is billing for 485 megawatts of capacity. Chief executive Adam Sullivan said the first colocation agreement is nearing full delivery while construction under a second is underway across five campuses, so contracted capacity still to be delivered keeps the growth going. Bulls add that this scale of billable capacity shows the conversion strategy works in practice, not only on paper. They argue that heavy spending is the price of getting capacity online, and that revenue from leases is now starting to catch up with the outlay.
We recently looked at why Core Scientific keeps buying more power.
1. Sterling Infrastructure (NASDAQ:STRL)
Number of Billionaire Holders: 24
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 65
Sterling Infrastructure delivered a record quarter and still watched its shares fall, which says a lot about where investor worry sits right now. The company clears land and does the electrical work for data centers, chip plants and factories, so its fortunes follow the AI buildout. Reuters reported that when Democrats won Congress, with gains in Texas and Georgia where opposition to data centers has been growing, operators and suppliers of the buildout sold off on fears of a slower pace.
Bulls say the business itself has not changed. Third-quarter revenue rose 127%, and combined backlog, which includes awards not yet signed, reached $6.14 billion. Management raised its 2026 outlook and counts nearly $8 billion of scoped work once the next phases of current projects are included, which it says gives years of visibility. Chief executive Joe Cutillo credited strong demand and disciplined execution for the results. Bulls add that a backlog of that size, paired with a raised outlook, suggests the pullback reflects sentiment rather than the work in hand.
Our ranking of the best AI infrastructure stocks to hold for the long term covers more of the group.
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