AEX, CRML, and MAIR: Three Under-the-Radar Tickers Flying While Everyone Stares at Tesla
A drone IPO that went parabolic, a rare earth play doubling down on Greenland, and an industrial giant hiding in plain sight
Ticker Ratings
While the financial internet collectively lost its mind over Tesla's robotaxi narrative and Netflix's Reed Hastings exit, three genuinely interesting small-cap situations were doing their thing in relative quiet — and at least one of them is still early.
$AEX — military drone maker AEX — debuted at $20/share, opened indicated at $23–25, and closed its first day up 35%. The IPO was 12x oversubscribed, it carries an $8B+ pipeline, nearly quadrupled Q1 revenue YoY, and has a $645M contract with US European Command already signed. With defense budgets expanding and drones becoming the infantry of modern conflict, the backlog here is not imaginary. $CRML (Critical Metals) is the one Bloomberg's Stock Movers segment casually mentioned like it wasn't a 35% single-day rip — the company just raised its stake in a Greenland rare earth deposit from 42% to 92.5% and is now up 82% year-to-date despite a punishing 31% short float. That short interest is either a squeeze waiting to happen or the market telling you something — you decide which story you believe. Then there's $MAIR — Madison Air just pulled off the biggest US industrial IPO since 1999, operates in a $40B TAM with only 8% market share, grew commercial revenue 17% in 2025, and exits the year with $4.5B in orders. They serve data centers, which represent 20% of their commercial revenue — a detail that ages extremely well given where AI infrastructure spending is headed.
Three companies, three very different stories, one common thread: nobody at the dinner party is talking about them yet — which is usually exactly the right time to pay attention.