IPO Season: Why Patience Is The Name of the Game

In this episode of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium and Lou Whiteman, along with Motley Fool analyst Jason Moser, discuss:

• June 5’s market crash.
• IPO season.
• Autonomy is here.
• Who is making irresponsible predictions?
• Stocks on our radar.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on June 5, 2026.

Travis Hoium: It's IPO season, and we're going public with our takes. Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. I'm Travis Hoium today, joined by Lou Whiteman and Jason Moser. Guys, we are going to get to the IPOs that are coming up. They're coming fast and furious, and the numbers are huge.

But I did want to get your thoughts on the market today, because the entire story over the past few months has been everything AI-related, these bottlenecks, these stocks are going absolutely crazy. Today, the Nasdaq, as we're recording, down almost 3%. The Dow, interestingly, close to flat. Some of these unloved industrial stocks, not doing all that much, but these hot technology stocks are just taking it on the chin. What do you think is going on today, and is this a real reverse or just a one-day phenomenon?

Lou Whiteman: Dow's saying, "How do you like me now?" with all of that. Look, this is arguably healthy, is one read on it, because when one thing goes up indefinitely, it's bound to not last forever. If we can have some leveling off during a bull market, that is sustainable for a bull market. Nasdaq is up 3% over the last month, even with today. Whether or not this is the beginning of the end or just a blip, we'll see. None of us know that. I think what we're learning is, and this is all coming off of Broadcom — and we were talking about this as far back as Nvidia — the market is less impressed quarter to quarter with pretty amazing AI-related numbers. We're just, I don't know if we've normalized it or we've come to expect it, or we just believe this is great, but even if it plateaus for a while, it can't keep going up forever, maybe all of the above, but we're just not getting as much juice out of the day-to-day AI trade at least this week as we have. Again, does that continue? Tell me what AI does in the next few weeks. Tell me when Anthropic releases their actual.

Travis Hoium: World-destroying model.

Lou Whiteman: Or even their numbers. If the rumors are true, and they're doing $50 billion right now in recurring revenue, and it's jumping 2X, that might be the next bar. You can't get too caught up in the moment, but you should at least notice what's going on, so you're not blindsided if this is the beginning of something.

Travis Hoium: Jason, I like to look at the history of these things, and I was investing back in the dot-com bubble going back on some of our live shows, one of the interesting things was the peak from a stock standpoint was not the same as peak from a company performance standpoint. This is where we talk about the market being a forward-looking mechanism. But if you look at Cisco's performance, Cisco was stock peaked six months or a year before the company stopped growing the way that they were 100% plus a year, so is this the market going, these customers are now talking about we got to be a little more efficient. Maybe we don't want to spend so much on this, and then extrapolating that out too, maybe memory prices don't go to the moon forever. Maybe demand for chips is not infinite. Is that maybe what the market is thinking about today?

Jason Moser: Well, I think at some point, that has to be central to the conversation. You look at some of these companies, the way they performed over the last year, little companies like Coherent, and Lumentum, companies that people know those two companies. I know them because I'd recommended them in a couple of our services, but that wasn't based on the AI trade. That was long before the AI trade even really became a thing. But if you look at these just this last year, the last 12 months, Coherent is up better than 400%. Lumentum is up better than 1,000%; there is just so much enthusiasm there. We're seeing valuation start to reach levels where you got to ask some questions. We just saw the Quantinuum IPO yesterday, that spinout from Honeywell. I think it's the company's value around $15 billion market capitalization now, generated $30 million in revenue over the last.

Travis Hoium: They just say the revenue rounded about to zero.

Jason Moser: Exactly, there is a lot of forward-looking going on right now. I think the questions regarding the ROI on some of the spin, the ROI on this AI investments that companies are making. As those questions start to grow louder, I think that we're going to see a little bit more focus on these valuations, they don't go up forever, but, it does seem like just the enthusiasm has not waned yet.

Travis Hoium: Well, maybe there's a little bit more rationality coming into the markets, at least over the past couple of days, where there's a little less rationality in the IPO market. Let's move over to that side of thing. SpaceX is coming in the next week or so, it sounds like. This is going to be potentially the biggest IPO ever, still looking at nearly a $2 trillion valuation. I still can't believe those numbers, and that it's you're going to be trading for somewhere around 100 times sales. We talked a lot about SpaceX on this show over the past couple of weeks. But Lou, I wanted to start with just some of the mechanics because I think this is what gets a little bit confusing is these are massive IPOs. But where does that money come from? Where is there just $80 billion sitting around for SpaceX, and then another 60-100 billion for Anthropic? Then we've got potentially OpenAI coming later this year. Is that money just sitting around somewhere waiting to be put into the market?

Lou Whiteman: Well, I think JayMo did the research for me, so I want to give him credit, but about $8 trillion right now sitting in U.S. money markets. The money exists. Now, a good bit of that money. I know my money market money isn't dying to get into them. It's equity. I don't think that's a total pool. But is this money available, even at these levels? These are huge massive IPOs, though. The thing to think about, too, is there's other side of that coin, and this could take time to level out, but even if there is a great sucking sound where this takes attention from other opportunities, there's a lot of built-up equity. In these companies from just the investors that were in before the IPO, over time, and with SpaceX, it's shaky, when. But these investors will at least have the option of liquidating some of their stake, all of their stake.

I would wager that over the next six months, as much money will be taken out of SpaceX as money put in. As a long-term investor, I'm not really worried about just this IPO sucking all of the life out of the other investments. But if nothing else, it could cause volatility in the near term because it isn't going to be a one for one. There's not going to be $80 billion of fresh capital coming on to just offset whatever is bought up on day one. It's going to be ugly. It's going to be volatile. It's going to just cause all sorts of turbulence. But I would think of it more as, if you're at the beach, and a boat goes by, and you get bigger waves for a second, not like a long-term thing. We'll see what becomes of it all, but I do think the market can handle it, whether or not it will be smooth.

Jason Moser: This is not a no-wake zone, is what you're saying, Louis?

Lou Whiteman: Yes.

Travis Hoium: Well, the other interesting piece of, and I think SpaceX was the impetus for this, but Jason, we've got rule changes to indexes. It sounds like that's been pulled back even in the last 24 hours or so as.

Lou Whiteman: They're on the S&P side.

Travis Hoium: Well, yes, they're on the S&P side. SpaceX may end up in some of these indexes, which means that people who are buying index funds are going to be piling their money into these IPOs, whether they realize it or like it or not. But the other thing that I thought was interesting is that even a company as conservative as Fidelity, it is lowering the requirements; we've seen RobinHood, and so far, trying to get into the IPO game. You can buy a share or two here or there. But Fidelity is a bigger player, bigger accounts there, and they're even lowering the threshold to get into some of these IPOs. How do you think about that as an investor, they're really leaning on retail?

Jason Moser: Well, I'm glad you brought that up. That was something I wanted to mention because all these rule changes and exceptions chap my hide, man. I don't really it doesn't sit well with me. I wish that they were playing a little bit more with the rules that everyone else has been subjected to. But the Fidelity thing, they're lowering that limit, it can be anywhere $100,000-$500,000 in some cases. They're lowering it down to $2,000, which means that the retail investor is going to have an opportunity to get into this. That's, I think, clearly why they're doing it. I think that's where they need to be really careful.

I'm of two minds when it comes to SpaceX. On the one hand, I do really think this company is one of one, it is a unique company, and I don't think that what they have is very easily replicated. But by the same token, you look at the state of the business today, and you think, well, how in the world it commands this valuation is beyond me. That’s where I think retail investors would be better served to just sit and wait, give this thing some time to play out. This is a company I'm going to enjoy following because I love space and all that stuff that comes with it. I'm not saying I won't ever own shares. I possibly could, but I can tell you that I'm going to wait at least a year before I ever even consider it, because there is just a lot of moving parts that comes with this company, and it does seem like there's been, I don't want to say impropriety, but they're trying to massage the rules, and make all these things happen, and it's for a very obvious reason: They're trying to raise as much capital as possible. I get it. But I think you’ve got to go into situations like these as a retail investor. I think it's healthy. It benefits you to go in with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Lou Whiteman: Thing is, I don't even think they're trying to raise more capital. I think they're trying to just hit a target valuation, which is just more frustrating. Look, I could make a very uninspired academic argument for why maybe the index changes make sense. I just don't think the rules were written envisioning IPOs of this size, and if you're going to represent the market, you have to include $2 trillion companies, so I can at least I agree with you, JayMo. I will tell you what really gets my blood boiling? I don't know if you've gone over to the roadshow site, where the SpaceX will give you their roadshow, but the top of that website, there is a click, Open A Brokerage Account here, with all of the underwriters you can go in. I know we are not supposed to provide individual advice to anyone, but I dare say, if you don't currently have a brokerage account, so that is your experience with stocks please, think twice before opening a brokerage account just to jump into this IPO. It seems like that is the worst form of investing to go, this is literally going from I've never driven before to NASCAR looks fun.

Jason Moser: Well, and we're going to see a lot of the same hubbub with Anthropic and OpenAI. They're coming.

Travis Hoium: Definitely something for us to watch, but I think I agree with you. This is something I'm going to be sitting on the sidelines for a while. Even those index funds, I'm a little bit concerned about what happens there. The history of some of these IPOs, even these massively popular, and eventually very profitable IPOs, is not great. Coinbase dropped. Facebook dropped around 50%. There are a lot of these very well-known companies that don’t perform very well, don’t look at the first-day move. What happens six months, 12 months later? That's why waiting maybe isn't the worst idea.

Jason Moser: Uber, same thing.

Travis Hoium: There's a chart going around this week that showed dozens of huge IPOs. Weren't a great time to buy on that opening day. When we come back, we're going to talk about the autonomous future. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, as recently as 12 months ago, the future of autonomous driving was supposed to just be Tesla, and they were going to dominate the market, have effectively a monopoly, and Robotaxis. But that is not the way that things have played out. Over just the past year, it's been fascinating to see how quickly some of these companies, and partnerships have advanced. Companies like WeRide, Avride, you have the Nuro partnership with Lucid. Jason, as you look at this autonomous space, how do you see this industry playing out? Is this one of these huge growth industries where there's going to be lots of winners, or is there going to be just a battle for market share over the next 5-10 years?

Jason Moser: That's a really good question, it does seem like there are start up companies that are getting into this space and partnering up with bigger players in the space, it's something that clearly it's there. The technology exists, and I think it's going to be something that serves some parts of the country very well, and there are other parts of the country where it's not going to really be a thing. I don't think we're.

Travis Hoium: Is that a direct shot at the Minneapolis area?

Jason Moser: What? No, I'm not taking shots at anyone. I love everybody. I do think it's just, you got to look past also, like what does having a driver's license, and having a car represent to the individual, there are a lot of people that want that license, and want to be able to drive because it represents freedom. You can get behind that wheel. You can go wherever you want, whenever you want.

There's still a lot of questions regarding technology, we're seeing just more, and more articles every day of Waymo's going through, deep standing water, and causing trouble. I was just reading a headline here earlier today about a Waymo in Dallas. Dallas Police Department was responding to just some big explosion, and on their way to deal with that, they came across a Waymo car that, I guess, was attempting to do a three-point turn in the middle of the road, and then got stuck. It just was sitting there blocking the road. That's exactly, it's blocking the road. The police officer has to get in. He can't do anything but because the car is locked up. Then they have to go get in touch with Waymo, and Waymo unlocks the device, so that he can then get in there, and actually manually move the car out of the way. It's just those things happen.

I think there is going to be a level of hesitation on a lot of folks' part until we see just some redundancy in confidence that these things are just going to be truly safer than someone being behind the wheel. Now, obviously, some people drive better than others, so I'm not putting everybody on a level playing field there. But I didn't get a clip. Waymo has clearly witnessed a lot of success so far. Waymo revenue grew from 125 million at the end of 2024 to 355 million by February 2026. That's a company that's benefited a lot just from the Google relationship, being a part of Alphabet. There's a tremendous capital resources there, and they can tuck those results in, so they don't really have to be so obvious, but it's really weird to me to see Tesla almost taking a back seat to this now, you just don't hear much about Tesla anymore. I wonder if Elon Musk is doing that on purpose, but obviously, he's got a lot of pokers in the fire as it is.

Lou Whiteman: He's very distracted right now. JayMo, I know exactly that Dallas story. I was late for a reservation in Atlanta not long ago because of Waymo trying to do a three-point turn and not doing it well. I couldn't figure out if I should be impressed that the robot was trying. But look, I think, to your point, whether or not I haven't heard Elon talk about making money off your car for a long time. I feel like that dream is dead. It probably was always impractical for insurance, and other reasons. I personally don't want some drunk stranger coming home in the backseat of my car while I sleep. I don't know if that is. But the focus it feels like right now is driver assist on the vehicles we own, and Robotaxis where it makes sense, which is a very different market opportunity.

Jason Moser: [OVERLAPPING] That almost seems rational.

Lou Whiteman: It's still a very big market opportunity. I think Waymo is certainly out in front. I think Uber is well-positioned for now, but I can't help but wonder Waymo, it feels like they have the opportunity to bypass the middleman with Google Maps, Gemini personal assistant, all things. I don't know how long Uber's moat here lasts. I also think just the bigger automotive picture, if you look at tariffs, if you look at just what American consumers want versus the rest of the world, it feels like we are ending up splitting the whole industry, including autonomy with what the Chinese companies are doing. Where American companies are well-positioned in the U.S. and only the U.S., and the rest of the world is going in a different direction, the good news is the U.S. is a huge market, but I know Waymo is trying to get into London. I think if I'm Alphabet, maybe even if I have to slow my role in the U.S., I'm trying to go international because it really feels like the international market is just moving away from the U.S. companies in a lot of ways.

Travis Hoium: The other question that we may get an answer to by the end of next year, for sure, is how many players are going to be viable in this space? If I'm an investor in Uber, and part of that thesis is, there's going to be dozens of companies who are going to be making these vehicles, not just Waymo, but we'll see if that's true or not. Maybe Waymo does have a big more here. When we come back, we're going to talk about some of the predictions about today's market. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems investing.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. There's been a lot of predictions about the market, a lot of stories being told about a lot of the stocks that we may be own today, but someone's not telling the truth. I wanted to ask Lou and Jason how many Pinocchios they’re giving to some of these predictions. I'm going to go 1-5. One is the most truthful, five is the least truthful. I saw a good post about this this week, that the market used to be about buying stocks with valuation, and hoping that there was a vision that would materialize a company like Apple. Today, we're buying a lot of stocks with a vision. Hoping that the financials will eventually show up, so we'll see if that continues for the future. But with that in mind and with the SpaceX IPO coming up, Goldman Sachs predicts, Jason, that SpaceX can 100x their revenue by 2030, I think it was. How many Pinocchios are you giving that?

Jason Moser: Well, given the fact that Goldman “Slacks,” as I like to call them, is leading the way on the underwriting for this IPO.

Travis Hoium: Their incentive, you're saying, is to make this as high as possible.

Jason Moser: Yeah. That's Charlie Munger always said, “show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome.” I think this is just a perfect example. The conflict of interest here is obvious. They're working for the company, and they're trying to get the greatest valuation they can possibly get for, even though it might not be in the best interest of individual investors. The incentive has obviously been for Goldman Slacks, should say that Goldman Sachs. Incentive is there for them to tell the best story they possibly can. That number just sounds absurd. If you just look at it on its surface, it seems ridiculous. I'm not saying it can't happen, but I'm not saying that I would bet on it happening, but I also understand why they're saying it. I mean, shoot, man, I'd get it five Pinocchios.

Travis Hoium: Lou?

Lou Whiteman: I'll go a little more generous and maybe just three Pinocchios. I don't necessarily mean that as a compliment. Look, Jason's right on Goldman. I think the conflict is much simpler, though. This is the biggest IPO in history. If it's a bomb, and they are the leading underwriter on it, that's not good for anyone's career over there. I think that right there is motivation. Here's the thing. If this is possible, it only goes to show how underwhelming SpaceX's revenue has been so far. They did $18 billion in sales in 2025 across the whole company. AI was just a fraction of that. If you want to get to 100x, maybe Anthropic's doing 50 billion on AI alone right now. If SpaceX can actually muster some version of Grok that is competitive, I do think that that just getting regression to the mean with these guys is actually going to get you part the way there. I will say that it is possible that we get something approaching that if SpaceX can actually turn itself into an impressive AI story. Bottom line, guys, is I don't think Grok falls into that category right now, and I don't know how you get there. I'm not optimistic, but if they do it, it's a consolation prize just based on how and underwhelming the businesses right now.

Jason Moser: Well, I think that's exactly it, you're spot on there with Grok. You've got Anthropic with its Claude models, you've got Google with its Gemini models. You've got OpenAI with ChatGPT. Grok is just an also-ran. When you look at the numbers, the users, that tells you everything you need to know.

Travis Hoium: What enterprise is going to be using Grok, too?

Jason Moser: To me [OVERLAPPING]

Lou Whiteman: All of them until next week.

Jason Moser: It's unfathomable that that's the case, then you're telling me maybe you got to build something from the ground up that actually goes in there and disrupts an Anthropic or OpenAI, which I just think that is just terribly optimistic. Now, if they're talking about AI and saying, well, this also includes that concept of data centers in space, I can see that opportunity. I think that's something that gets bandied about a lot, but I also think it's a bit more difficult than people give it credit for. But I think if there's a company that actually can make that happen, SpaceX is on a very short list of them. Maybe that's an opportunity that exists for them down the road. But I think their AI presence to date is just almost inconsequential.

Lou Whiteman: Let's be honest. We can get nasty letters, but there will not be big data centers in space by 2030. The 2030 part of it is, yeah, I don't know. We'll see.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, we will see, but it's definitely this is a case of when you're listening to these things, when you're reading about some of these predictions, consider who the person making these predictions are. As Jason said, there is a big incentive for Goldman Sachs to make this a very successful IPO. Let's talk about another Elon Musk company. Cathie Wood, I think, continues to think that robot taxis are going to be able to operate in 25-50% of U.S. cities by the end of this year. Lou, are you buying that one to five Pinocchios?

Lou Whiteman: I think I'm probably going four Pinocchios here. Again, all of these things have a basis in the truth. In theory, if you can get autonomous right, you should be able to roll it out in multiple locations relatively quickly. I guess I'm more skeptical of the timetable end of year, because we are just starting to see in one city where it's truly autonomous. It feels like that, even if it's capable, it would be imprudent to roll it out that fast to even 25. But in theory, if Austin goes well, 25% of U.S. cities in the next couple of years could happen. I think I'm probably skeptical of that, but I think they could, dear. I just don't think I want them moving so fast as to say, great, it worked for a week in Austin. Let's roll this out to everybody else in the second half of the year.

Jason Moser: Yeah, I think so Cathie Wood is fascinating to me. I actually enjoy her. I love her forward-thinking nature, her take on the future. Sometimes she makes maybe some questionable investing decisions. She does seem like she's a megaphone for Musk at times, and that's where I probably would push back a little bit. I'm going to go two Pinocchios here because I like her. I don't want to come down too hard on her. It seems like we hear this nonstop. It's just ad nauseam. Whether it's Musk or Cathie Wood or someone else at Ark, they just keep talking about how this is going to happen tomorrow. No. 1, 25-50% of U.S. cities, it's a pretty big range.

Travis Hoium: It's also a lot of cities. 25% is still a lot of cities. That’s more than Waymo operates today.

Jason Moser: It's a lot. I think just we know that Musk loves to set very audacious timelines, and he is also known for never hitting them. By the same token, he's not a guy that I would ever bet against. I like him. I think what he's doing is important stuff. But he just rarely hits those timelines. I do think we're going to see robot taxis continue to gain presence in markets where they are needed. That's not everywhere. But there will be markets that need them and that want them. I would probably bump that timeline to something like 2035, though.

Travis Hoium: Jason, let's go to your area of expertise. The world of quantum computing. McKinsey predicts that quantum hardware and software is going to be a $60-100 billion business by 2035, for a little bit of context. There are a handful of quantum computing companies that are extremely highly valuable. The market cap of them combined has got to be over $100 billion at this point. But their revenue is not almost not there. No commensurate to those market caps yet. But is that projection of growth realistic?

Jason Moser: Yeah, I think it is. I get to work on our quantum leap service here, and we've had a lot of fun learning about the space, and people often ask what is quantum computing? You can go down a rabbit hole explaining it. But ultimately, it's just more powerful computing. It's computers that are doing things that our modern-day supercomputers simply can't do. I think it's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when. We're already seeing plenty of companies in the space making big investments. You talk about those pure-plays like your IonQs or Quantinuum I mentioned earlier that just IPOs. Those are the pure play companies, they have gone through some really astonishing valuations based on just very small top line numbers. That's where I would be careful. I'm not saying they're bad businesses, but I'm saying there's a lot of enthusiasm baked into those shares today for something that is going to take a little while to develop. I think the timeline up in the next five to 10 years, it'll become a little bit more mainstream. But we're also seeing big players that have almost been forgotten. This isn't your dad's IBM, Travis. IBM today is really making a lot of progress in this space. Microsoft doing the same thing, Alphabet doing the same thing. Then you can even look at the payment space, Visa and Mastercard, or having to invest in post-quantum cryptography security, so that when quantum computing does become more mainstream, the information on the Internet can be protected, which today's modern-day cryptography won't be able to stand up to it.

Travis Hoium: Is paper money that we could just pass back and forth when we buy.

Jason Moser: Yes, it's common, and it is exciting, but it is also scary because it's going to bring its fair share of risks that a lot of these companies they're already making these investments today to really be able to answer the call when the time comes.

Travis Hoium: Lou, I'll give Jason one Pinocchio there. But what do you got?

Lou Whiteman: Can I do half of Pinocchio? JayMo knows this sector better than me, but 2035, I agree it's more of a timing thing. 2035 gives you a lot of leash. I'll say, though, guys, too, and maybe to the point of is this investable? $100 billion seems pretty blah, to me, as an opportunity, if we're only.

Travis Hoium: Anthropic is already almost there.

Lou Whiteman: Well, Nvidia did that in 80 billion in one quarter, one company with AI. I hope to heck that if quantum works, it's more than $100 billion in revenue opportunity. But in a decade, because if not, there's going to be a lot of disappointed investors in today's companies. Maybe we'll see. But, yeah, I would think if this stuff works, I would hope it's going to be a lot bigger than that.

Travis Hoium: Let's do a rapid fire segment. We talked a little bit about autonomy a moment ago, but I want to get an idea of how realistic you think some of these predictions are. One to five Pinocchios. Lou, you're going to start. You are going to own autonomous vehicle that is going to drive you around. No need for you to actually push the pedals or steer the wheel by 2035.

Lou Whiteman: Five Pinocchios.

Travis Hoium: Five Pinocchios. Not but. Jason.

Jason Moser: Five Pinocchios, ain't happening.

Travis Hoium: The better question, maybe, will my nine-year-old ever get his driver's license? He started mowing the lawn this week, and I told him about push mowers, where you actually had to push the mower. The mower didn't drive itself. He was confused by the concept. It's crazy how fast some of those technologies pick up. Over 50% of rideshare rides will be in fully autonomous vehicles by 2035. Jason, what do you think?

Jason Moser: I'm going to go with four Pinocchios. 50% is a lot. I think these rideshares, I think the autonomous vehicles are just going to be accepted where the markets need them the most. I'm not saying they won't be there, but I'm just saying 50% is a lot.

Lou Whiteman: With that broad a statement, you're right. If you want to break it down, 50% of certain markets, maybe, 50% of the world. No way. 50% of the U.S., I doubt it. It's almost too broad to really opine on, but 50% of just total rideshares. No way.

Travis Hoium: To put some context to that, 2017, Uber had 68 million users on a monthly basis. Now they have 200 million, so it's more than doubled. So if this doubles the size of the market and takes that 50% share. I'll say that's going to be realistic, but I understand you guys skepticism. You guys need to ground me with my abolitionist economy. In 2035, Lou, you are going to be able to ride in a fully autonomous aircraft and thinking, maybe the EV toll companies would be the ones to lead the charge there.

Lou Whiteman: Previewing the radar stock, I'm still pretty skeptical by 2035, I'm going to go four Pinocchios maybe, but definitely there'll still be a steering wheel there, even if it is driving itself.

Travis Hoium: Jason.

Jason Moser: I know a lot of these planes today can already do a lot on their own, but fully autonomous aircraft, just like a commercial that sounds like a regulatory nightmare. I think it'll probably take a little bit longer than 2035 to get there, so I'll go three Pinocchios. I think it's going to happen, but not on that timeline.

Travis Hoium: We have one minute left. Jason, quickly, do you think you're going to own fully an autonomous robot by 2035?

Jason Moser: Fully not. Five Pinocchios, ain't happening. Count me out of it.

Lou Whiteman: I don't even know what fully means here, so I'm just going to be.

Travis Hoium: I guess, it would have to be, yes, a robot. Look, this is one where it's going to be fascinating to see how the projections on some of these humanoid robots growth, whether you're looking at Tesla with Optimist or any of the other competitors that most of them are still private. You've got phenomenal growth plans. It will be very interesting to see what the adoption looks like. There's plenty of things that I would love to not do around the house related to picking up after kids and dishes and in the lawn. Well, again, so much of this is a definition question. Technically speaking, my neighbor's got a robot that mows the lawn. I guess my neighbor already has one. If you want to lower it to there, then it's probably a lot fewer Pinocchios.

Jason Moser: Yeah, I've got a vacuum cleaner that does its own thing and even empties his bag at the station, I guess we have something there. But I don't think that's what comes into your head I saw humanoid, and it was just like.

Travis Hoium: Well, we'll see if those growth projections are able to be met by some of these companies. When we come back, we're going to get to the stocks on our radar. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gem Investing.

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Travis Hoium: As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows The Motley Fool’s editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our Fool advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes.

We like to end the show with the stocks on our radar and bring in Dan Boyd from behind the glass to get some comments. Lou, you're up first. What do you got?

Lou Whiteman: Dan, I'm going to reach into our nanocap service today and spotlight Merlin, Ticker MRLN. Merlin, we touch this before. They are developing autonomous systems for airplanes. The stock is up 25% today after the U.S. Air Force completed a design review of Merlin software and green lighted it to begin testing on C130 cargo planes. Now, look, we are still ways off from this becoming a mainstay in the cockpit. I don't see a future in my lifetime where Merlin will be completely replacing pilots. But look, the world is facing a huge pilot shortage. We need more than 500,000 additional pilots over the next two decades just to keep up with demand. If Merlin's system works, big F, I know. But if it works and we can reduce the number of pilots on an international flight from four to three or two, that would be a huge success. That's the opportunity. We're not there yet. It'll take time, but the Air Force is interested enough to pursue it. That's a great seal of approval as far as growing this business. Yesterday's news huge step in the right direction. I'm just as excited as the market is right now.

Travis Hoium: Dan, what do you think about Lou bringing a stock that has a cool name?

Lou Whiteman: Well, the U.S. government known for never wasting money or pursuing opportunities that don't pan out. Yeah, this stock's got all of it. It's got I don't see a future. It's got big if. It's got nanocap. All the things I love.

Travis Hoium: Jason, where are you looking at this.

Jason Moser: I'm old enough to remember that old Merlin game. You remember that little piece of hardware, like red thing? You can have like six different games on it.

Travis Hoium: Dan's probably more bullish.

Jason Moser: Yeah, May be.

Lou Whiteman: Dan, I think you got to keep on Shopify at these levels. Ticker is SHOP. First-quarter results were really impressive. Total revenue of $3.2 billion was up 34% from a year ago. Gross merchandise volume was up 35%. I think equally as impressive, the European gross merchandise volume grew 48%. That was outpacing North American growth. I think that just gives another example of the company's ability to scale globally. They also appear to be benefiting from their investments in AI. They have this company. It's an AI-powered commerce assistant called Sidekick for their customers. Saw 385% growth through the quarter, more than 12,000 custom apps were built using Sidekick for the quarter. That was up 200%. Guidance for the coming quarter seems pretty reasonable as well. The market's been a little bit glass had fenthy on this one recently, but I think the commitment to cash flow and keeping that free cash flow margin in the mid teens should leave long-term investors encouraged about the future.

Travis Hoium: Shopify in a 35% drawdown. What do you think, Dan?

Lou Whiteman: This actually has a lot of things I do like, such as merchandise volume up and great earnings report, as opposed to what Lou has given us. I think we're going to go Shopify this week, Mr. Travis.

Travis Hoium: Congratulations, Jason. I at least want to give Lou credit for bringing an interesting company with an interesting name. I go to look at Merlin a little bit more, so that's right up my alley. That's all the time we have. Thanks to Jason and Lou and Dan Boyd behind the glass. I'm Travis Hoium. Thanks for listening to everybody. We'll see you here tomorrow.

Jason Moser has positions in Alphabet, Mastercard, Shopify, and Visa. Lou Whiteman has positions in Honeywell International, Merlin, and Shopify. Travis Hoium has positions in Alphabet, Coinbase Global, Robinhood Markets, and Shopify. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Coherent, Goldman Sachs Group, Honeywell International, International Business Machines, IonQ, Lumentum, Mastercard, Meta Platforms, Nvidia, Shopify, Tesla, and Visa. The Motley Fool recommends Coinbase Global and Merlin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.