Poet Technologies Crashed Again Today -- Is the AI Stock a Buy on the Pullback?

Poet Technologies (NASDAQ: POET) stock got hit with another round of crushing sell-offs in Wednesday's trading. The company's share price ended the daily session down 17.8% despite a relatively calm backdrop for the broader market. The S&P 500 index and the Nasdaq Composite each closed out the session roughly flat.

Poet stock has taken investors on a rollercoaster of volatility recently, with shares more than doubling last week on news that the company had secured a substantial contract order through Celestial AI -- a company acquired by Marvell earlier this year. Those gains have been erased this week following news that Marvell had canceled the contract order for Poet's hardware.

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In last week's trading, Poet Technologies stock rocketed 108% higher -- with the incredible rally driven by CFO Thomas Mika's apparent confirmation that the company had secured an order through Marvell's Celestial AI. News of the artificial intelligence (AI) optics order cancellation has understandably caused a big reappraisal for Poet's near-term performance trajectory, but could the company's stock wind up delivering huge wins for investors following the recent pullback?

Is Poet stock a buy right now?

As a company with a roughly $1 billion market capitalization and little in the way of revenue-generating history, Poet is a speculative stock by definition. The company has been working to develop high-performance optics technologies, and some recent indicators have suggested that the business could be poised to see rapidly ramping commercialization along with the rollout of its new tech products.

While the company's share price has fallen roughly 50% over the last week, Poet stock actually looks significantly riskier than it did at the beginning of last week. While Marvell cited Poet's disclosure of otherwise confidential orders as the driving reason for canceling its previous deal through Celestial AI, there's a risk that the situation could be more complicated than that. The situation involving the apparent order confirmation in an interview and subsequent cancelation just days later is a bizarre and unusual development, and the lack of visibility surrounding the issue suggests that most investors should steer clear of Poet right now even if a significant near-term rebound for the stock could occur.

Keith Noonan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.