MW This tech maven bashes nuclear stocks and shares the real way to play AI's energy boom
By Philip van Doorn
Paul Wick co-manages the $19.6 billion Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund, which has been a strong performer
Investors need to be careful if they place early bets on startup companies seeking to provide nuclear-generated electricity for data centers, according to Paul Wick of Columbia Threadneedle Investments.
The stock market always looks ahead, and sometimes investors jump on trends so early that they might anticipate events that will never take place.
This phenomenon is at the heart of Paul Wick's skeptical take on early-stage companies that seek to provide nuclear power to data centers and their largest customers, known as hyperscalers, as the build-out of generative artificial intelligence continues.
Wick co-manages the Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund CCIZX SLMCX, which had $19.6 billion in assets under management as of Oct. 31. The fund was launched in 1983, and Wick has served as one of its portfolio managers since 1990. Ameriprise Financial Inc. $(AMP)$ acquired Seligman in 2008 and then acquired Columbia Funds from Bank of America Corp. (BAC) in 2010. The Seligman unit now manages between $28 billion and $29 billion in client assets, Wick said, including about $4 billion in two hedge funds.
The Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund holds many familiar large-cap technology stocks, but more than a third of the portfolio is invested in small-cap and midcap companies. The fund takes mostly long positions, but Wick and his team also short-sell some stocks. He declined to discuss short positions.
When asked to discuss concerns he had about the AI trend, Wick told MarketWatch that investors "have to have the confidence that this will germinate into lots of new companies and products, and that it is going to be successful over time."
He added: "We have some degree of skepticism of a number of these companies, such as OpenAI, and some of the private companies."
The privately held Anysphere (also known as Cursor, the name of its vibe-coding system) was recently valued at $29 billion as it completed its latest round of funding. But Wick is worried that Anysphere's "unit economics are really poor."
"They don't make gross profit dollars. The cost that they incur in enabling people to vibe code - paying OpenAI or Anthropic, or the hyperscalers - exceeds the revenues they generate," he said
OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, has been under pressure following Google's rollout of Gemini 3:
-- As ChatGPT turns three, Deutsche Bank offers these solutions to Altman's 'Code Red'
-- Here's what's crashing the ChatGPT party
Microsoft Corp. $(MSFT)$ is a major investor in OpenAI, having reported $13 billion in "total funding commitments," with $11.6 billion funded as of Sept. 30.
Microsoft was the sixth-largest holding of the Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund as of Oct. 31. When asked about the risk to Microsoft from competitors taking AI chatbot market share from OpenAI/ChatGPT, Wick emphasized that Microsoft was "getting paid by OpenAI" for use of its Azure cloud platform. Microsoft is also entitled to "a certain percentage of OpenAI's revenue and profits," he said. He added that subsequent rounds of financing commitments for OpenAI have come from SoftBank Group Corp. $(SFTBY)$ and venture-capital firms.
"So for Microsoft, there is a lot less risk than there is for OpenAI," Wick said.
He said that he and his colleagues were trying to be "thoughtful and judicious" when considering the risk of an AI bubble. They focus on technology stocks away from the AI sphere, such as semiconductor manufacturers that supply industrial companies, as well as enterprise and consumer software companies.
Wick also painted an interesting contrast between the AI build-out and the dot-com bubble that began to deflate in 2000. That bubble included "a rip-roaring market" for initial public offerings and secondary offerings of stock. He described the current IPO market as "terrible."
"One reason for the [current] tough IPO market is that more people have been participating in late-stage venture rounds and they have been overvaluing the companies," Wick said. This means that if a company wishes to go public after having received financing from venture-capital firms, it cannot do so at a valuation far below the valuation estimates that drove its recent VC funding rounds. "It has been difficult for companies to go public at acceptable valuations for mainstream investors," he said.
Nuclear power AI hype and risk
Wick cited Oklo Inc. (OKLO) and NuScale Power Corp. (SMR) as two companies working to develop nuclear power technology that have no revenue (in the case of Oklo) or little revenue but "lots of news releases."
In light of hyperscalers' "deals with utilities to bring old nuclear plants out of mothballs," Wick said it was understandable for investors to be interested in newer players in the nuclear space. Microsoft entered into a 20-year agreement last year with Constellation Energy Corp. (CEG) to purchase electricity after the restart of the Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.
"Oklo has made a series of announcements about the Department of Energy wanting to use them for specific installations. But the history of nuclear power is everything is more expensive than people initially conceive it as being, and it takes longer," Wick said. He is also concerned about "management teams with no operating experience."
Potential customers for companies developing new technology for nuclear power generation "don't want to be the first customer," he said. And investors looking to play the trend could be waiting five to 10 years for plants built by the companies they invest in to come online.
Wick said that Bloom Energy Corp. (BE) remained an excellent way for investors to ride along with the rising demand for electricity, even though the company's stock had risen by more than 370% for 2025, with nearly all the gains coming in the second half of the year. The company's market capitalization is $24.8 billion.
Bloom Energy makes fuel cells that use natural gas to generate electricity. According to Wick, the stock had declined significantly several years ago before one of his firm's analysts told him that Bloom had what "appeared to be the world's most efficient fuel cell."
Wick said that he and colleagues had built up a 19.9% ownership stake in Bloom Energy as of June 30, which was right at his firm's limit, before "the stock took off" and they began selling shares.
He said that GE Vernova Inc. (GEV) remained "realistically the best nuclear story" for investors right now because of its dominance of the market for gas turbines, but he also said GEV was "fully valued," so he didn't own the stock.
He said that Bloom Energy's technology was "arguably better" than gas turbines and that he thought that over the next five years Bloom "might be worth as much as GE Vernova," which has a market cap of $163 billion.
Another warning
Wick also warned investors to be careful with stocks of companies working to develop quantum-computing technology.
"We monitor red flags," he said, such as IonQ Inc.'s $(IONQ)$ use of stock to pay for many acquisitions of companies this year. "That is a flashing sign" that the acquirer's management team believes its own stock is highly priced, he said. He also pointed to the difficulty of integrating so many acquisitions.
When discussing quantum computing, Wick said it was "not clear that any of these technologies [would] work." He added: "As far as we can determine, quantum computing will have limited uses - code and encryption."
Top holdings
Here are the largest 10 holdings (out of 63) of the Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund as of Oct. 31:
Company Ticker % of portfolio 2025 return through Dec. 2 Bloom Energy Corp. BE 12.1% 373% Lam Research Corp. LRCX 6.8% 121% Broadcom Inc. AVGO 5.4% 66% Nvidia Corp. NVDA 5.4% 35% Alphabet Inc. GOOGL 4.9% 67% Microsoft Corp. MSFT 4.2% 17% Applied Materials Inc. AMAT 3.8% 65% Marvell Technology Inc. MRVL 3.8% -16% Western Digital Corp. WDC 3.8% 256% Apple Inc. AAPL 3.2% 15% Sources: Columbia Threadneedle Investments, LSEG
Fund performance and that of competitors
The Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund has several share classes. The institutional shares CCIZX are available through investment advisers and have annual expenses of 0.91% of average assets under management. This makes for annual fees totaling $91 for a $10,000 investment. The Class A shares SLMCX are available on discount-brokerage platforms and have an expense ratio of 1.16%. The Class A shares have a maximum sales charge of 5.75%. However, this is likely to be waived when the shares are purchased through brokerage platforms. Of course you would need to double-check on your own to make sure you avoid paying a sales charge.
The Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund's performance benchmark is the S&P North American Technology Sector Index XX:GTCKX. LSEG lists five competing U.S. funds that are benchmarked to the same index.
MW This tech maven bashes nuclear stocks and shares the real way to play AI's energy boom
By Philip van Doorn
Paul Wick co-manages the $19.6 billion Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund, which has been a strong performer
Investors need to be careful if they place early bets on startup companies seeking to provide nuclear-generated electricity for data centers, according to Paul Wick of Columbia Threadneedle Investments.
The stock market always looks ahead, and sometimes investors jump on trends so early that they might anticipate events that will never take place.
This phenomenon is at the heart of Paul Wick's skeptical take on early-stage companies that seek to provide nuclear power to data centers and their largest customers, known as hyperscalers, as the build-out of generative artificial intelligence continues.
Wick co-manages the Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund CCIZX SLMCX, which had $19.6 billion in assets under management as of Oct. 31. The fund was launched in 1983, and Wick has served as one of its portfolio managers since 1990. Ameriprise Financial Inc. (AMP) acquired Seligman in 2008 and then acquired Columbia Funds from $Bank of America Corp(BAC-N)$. (BAC) in 2010. The Seligman unit now manages between $28 billion and $29 billion in client assets, Wick said, including about $4 billion in two hedge funds.
The Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund holds many familiar large-cap technology stocks, but more than a third of the portfolio is invested in small-cap and midcap companies. The fund takes mostly long positions, but Wick and his team also short-sell some stocks. He declined to discuss short positions.
When asked to discuss concerns he had about the AI trend, Wick told MarketWatch that investors "have to have the confidence that this will germinate into lots of new companies and products, and that it is going to be successful over time."
He added: "We have some degree of skepticism of a number of these companies, such as OpenAI, and some of the private companies."
The privately held Anysphere (also known as Cursor, the name of its vibe-coding system) was recently valued at $29 billion as it completed its latest round of funding. But Wick is worried that Anysphere's "unit economics are really poor."
"They don't make gross profit dollars. The cost that they incur in enabling people to vibe code - paying OpenAI or Anthropic, or the hyperscalers - exceeds the revenues they generate," he said
OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, has been under pressure following Google's rollout of Gemini 3:
-- As ChatGPT turns three, Deutsche Bank offers these solutions to Altman's 'Code Red'
-- Here's what's crashing the ChatGPT party
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is a major investor in OpenAI, having reported $13 billion in "total funding commitments," with $11.6 billion funded as of Sept. 30.
Microsoft was the sixth-largest holding of the Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund as of Oct. 31. When asked about the risk to Microsoft from competitors taking AI chatbot market share from OpenAI/ChatGPT, Wick emphasized that Microsoft was "getting paid by OpenAI" for use of its Azure cloud platform. Microsoft is also entitled to "a certain percentage of OpenAI's revenue and profits," he said. He added that subsequent rounds of financing commitments for OpenAI have come from SoftBank Group Corp. (SFTBY) and venture-capital firms.
"So for Microsoft, there is a lot less risk than there is for OpenAI," Wick said.
He said that he and his colleagues were trying to be "thoughtful and judicious" when considering the risk of an AI bubble. They focus on technology stocks away from the AI sphere, such as semiconductor manufacturers that supply industrial companies, as well as enterprise and consumer software companies.
Wick also painted an interesting contrast between the AI build-out and the dot-com bubble that began to deflate in 2000. That bubble included "a rip-roaring market" for initial public offerings and secondary offerings of stock. He described the current IPO market as "terrible."
"One reason for the [current] tough IPO market is that more people have been participating in late-stage venture rounds and they have been overvaluing the companies," Wick said. This means that if a company wishes to go public after having received financing from venture-capital firms, it cannot do so at a valuation far below the valuation estimates that drove its recent VC funding rounds. "It has been difficult for companies to go public at acceptable valuations for mainstream investors," he said.
Nuclear power AI hype and risk
Wick cited Oklo Inc. (OKLO) and NuScale Power Corp. (SMR) as two companies working to develop nuclear power technology that have no revenue (in the case of Oklo) or little revenue but "lots of news releases."
In light of hyperscalers' "deals with utilities to bring old nuclear plants out of mothballs," Wick said it was understandable for investors to be interested in newer players in the nuclear space. Microsoft entered into a 20-year agreement last year with Constellation Energy Corp. (CEG) to purchase electricity after the restart of the Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.
"Oklo has made a series of announcements about the Department of Energy wanting to use them for specific installations. But the history of nuclear power is everything is more expensive than people initially conceive it as being, and it takes longer," Wick said. He is also concerned about "management teams with no operating experience."
Potential customers for companies developing new technology for nuclear power generation "don't want to be the first customer," he said. And investors looking to play the trend could be waiting five to 10 years for plants built by the companies they invest in to come online.
Wick said that Bloom Energy Corp. (BE) remained an excellent way for investors to ride along with the rising demand for electricity, even though the company's stock had risen by more than 370% for 2025, with nearly all the gains coming in the second half of the year. The company's market capitalization is $24.8 billion.
Bloom Energy makes fuel cells that use natural gas to generate electricity. According to Wick, the stock had declined significantly several years ago before one of his firm's analysts told him that Bloom had what "appeared to be the world's most efficient fuel cell."
Wick said that he and colleagues had built up a 19.9% ownership stake in Bloom Energy as of June 30, which was right at his firm's limit, before "the stock took off" and they began selling shares.
He said that GE Vernova Inc. (GEV) remained "realistically the best nuclear story" for investors right now because of its dominance of the market for gas turbines, but he also said GEV was "fully valued," so he didn't own the stock.
He said that Bloom Energy's technology was "arguably better" than gas turbines and that he thought that over the next five years Bloom "might be worth as much as GE Vernova," which has a market cap of $163 billion.
Another warning
Wick also warned investors to be careful with stocks of companies working to develop quantum-computing technology.
"We monitor red flags," he said, such as IonQ Inc.'s (IONQ) use of stock to pay for many acquisitions of companies this year. "That is a flashing sign" that the acquirer's management team believes its own stock is highly priced, he said. He also pointed to the difficulty of integrating so many acquisitions.
When discussing quantum computing, Wick said it was "not clear that any of these technologies [would] work." He added: "As far as we can determine, quantum computing will have limited uses - code and encryption."
Top holdings
Here are the largest 10 holdings (out of 63) of the Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund as of Oct. 31:
Company Ticker % of portfolio 2025 return through Dec. 2
Bloom Energy Corp. BE 12.1% 373%
Lam Research Corp. LRCX 6.8% 121%
Broadcom Inc. AVGO 5.4% 66%
Nvidia Corp. NVDA 5.4% 35%
Alphabet Inc. GOOGL 4.9% 67%
Microsoft Corp. MSFT 4.2% 17%
Applied Materials Inc. AMAT 3.8% 65%
Marvell Technology Inc. MRVL 3.8% -16%
Western Digital Corp. WDC 3.8% 256%
Apple Inc. AAPL 3.2% 15%
Sources: Columbia Threadneedle Investments, LSEG
Fund performance and that of competitors
The Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund has several share classes. The institutional shares CCIZX are available through investment advisers and have annual expenses of 0.91% of average assets under management. This makes for annual fees totaling $91 for a $10,000 investment. The Class A shares SLMCX are available on discount-brokerage platforms and have an expense ratio of 1.16%. The Class A shares have a maximum sales charge of 5.75%. However, this is likely to be waived when the shares are purchased through brokerage platforms. Of course you would need to double-check on your own to make sure you avoid paying a sales charge.
The Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund's performance benchmark is the S&P North American Technology Sector Index XX:GTCKX. LSEG lists five competing U.S. funds that are benchmarked to the same index.
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December 03, 2025 12:35 ET (17:35 GMT)
MW This tech maven bashes nuclear stocks and -2-
So here they are, with the two Seligman share classes first, and then the other five funds, sorted by three-year average annual returns. All returns are net of expenses and include reinvested dividends but exclude any sales charges. Below the funds are the benchmark index and two exchange-traded funds. The State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF XLK tracks the S&P 500 information technology sector and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY tracks the full S&P 500. The returns are through the end of November.
Mutual fund, index or ETF 3-year avg. return 5-year avg. return 10-year avg. return Expense ratio Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund - I 32.7% 21.6% 22.6% 0.910% Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund - A 32.4% 21.3% 22.3% 1.160% DWS Science and Technology Fund - A 36.1% 17.2% 19.9% 0.880% Nationwide Bailard Technology & Science Fund - M 31.0% 13.9% 18.5% 0.880% Nomura Science and Technology Fund - C 30.6% 13.9% 16.2% 1.920% Invesco Technology Fund - Investor 29.5% 11.1% 15.4% 0.910% Victory RS Science and Technology Fund - A 25.6% 3.6% 14.7% 1.480% S&P North American Technology Sector Index 37.3% 19.1% 22.4% N/A State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF 29.1% 19.3% 22.0% 0.080% SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust 20.4% 15.2% 14.5% 0.095%
The two listed share classes of the Columbia Seligman Technology and Information Fund have outperformed the listed competitors for the five-year and 10-year periods. For three years, the DWS Science and Technology Fund's Class A shares KTCAX have been the best performer on the list.
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