There was a flurry of trading activity at Ark Invest on Monday. The family of aggressive growth exchange-traded funds (ETFs) kicked off the new trading week with its busiest day of 2026, by the number of stocks it bought.
With Cathie Wood at the helm, Ark is always on the lookout for price disparities. Recent volatility will bring out the shopper in the Ark Invest co-founder and CEO.
Among the several stocks that Wood was buying for Ark on Monday, three names that stand out to me are CoreWeave (CRWV +2.01%), Datadog (DDOG 2.55%), and Circle Internet Group (CRCL +0.82%). All three were previous positions in her ETFs. Let's take a closer look at three fresh purchases.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. CoreWeave
CoreWeave is one of two stocks in Wood's shopping bag that weren't even trading publicly a year ago. The artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure play hit the market at $40 a share in March. After a slow start, investors gravitated to the story and CoreWeave's potential.
As a hyperscaler, CoreWeave offers up data center solutions optimized for resource-intensive AI workloads. The shares would go on to trade as high as $187 over the summer, but they are currently trading for less than half that much today.
NASDAQ: CRWV
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CoreWeave stock has an interesting origin story. It was started by hedge fund traders who pooled money to buy GPUs to mine crypto. It was a side business while they worked.
After a particularly challenging crash in cryptocurrency several years ago, the hedge fund managers were at a crossroads: Do they cut their losses and sell their GPUs, or do they take advantage of a lot of people thinking the same thing and make the most of the fire sales to expand their arsenals? They chose the latter, and it has paid off.
At the time, they figured they could harness the power of their GPUs to help movie studios crank out special effects and potentially ride the early wave of AI. Once again, choosing the latter has paid off. Not going Hollywood has opened up the more lucrative realm of the hyperscaler revolution.
Trailing revenue has more than tripled for CoreWeave. This kind of growth isn't sustainable, but it's not too shabby to be eyeing 136% top-line growth for 2026. With its order backlog almost doubling over the past year -- to $55.6 billion -- it has room to run for a company with just $4.6 billion in trailing revenue.
NASDAQ: DDOG
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2. Datadog
The good news is that Datadog has more than tripled since going public in 2019. The bad news is that almost the entire jump occurred in its first two years of trading. Shares of the enterprise software provider, which offers cloud monitoring and other business tech modules, have risen by less than 30% over the past five years. Recent investors have it even worse, as Datadog stock has shed 36% of its value since peaking in October.
Many software companies have seen their valuations reset lower in the past few weeks, as investors ponder the disruptive nature of AI as a coding platform. However, even before the investing community began treating AI as a headwind rather than an opportunity, Datadog and many of its peers were seeing their growth rates decelerate.
Datadog's revenue has climbed 27% over the past four quarters. This would be respectable for most companies, but Datadog routinely posted top-line growth of more than 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 a 21% increase in the year that just started.
Datadog still continues to provide an essential toolbox for its clients. Wood is likely hoping that the sale of the shares doesn't last.
NYSE: CRCL
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3. Circle Internet Group
Finally, we have another company in a niche that -- like Datadog -- is facing near-term pressure. 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 nearly a 10-bagger in a matter of weeks, but the shares have plummeted 80% from that sudsy peak.
Circle is an issuer of stablecoin products. It also provides blockchain solutions for the crypto industry. The market recently cooling on digital currencies is problematic in the near 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 shares are still trading well above their original IPO price point, but the massive markdown from its summertime high make it a tempting purchase for Wood right now.
