What SES AI Doubters Saw Before A 57% Fall

If you had looked at SES AI in early 2026 and decided not to touch a small, complex battery developer while analysts debated whether its AI platform could justify rich P/E assumptions, the outcome of that hesitation now looks very different. Investors who held SES AI from the start of the year are down 56.6%, including dividends. With hindsight off the table, which of the stretched revenue and margin assumptions on record in January would you want to interrogate first?

Narratives are how investors here put a case on the record, with explicit assumptions about revenue, margins and the multiple. Those assumptions imply an estimated Fair Value.

The move put SES AI in the middle of this trade. Scan 33 best rare earth metal stocks for other companies exposed to it.

The Two SES AI Stories Investors Had To Weigh

The shares cost US$1.8 at the start of the period, and SES AI sat between two sharply different but plausible stories about its future.

The bullish narrative put Fair Value at US$2, built on revenue growth assumptions of 176.1% and profit margins improving to 13.6% with a future P/E of 30.1x.

The bearish view saw Fair Value at US$1.33, still assuming 160.0% revenue growth and a 10.0% margin, but highlighting risks around aggressive expansion and customer concentration.

What The Results Tested In The SES AI Story

SES AI reaffirmed 2026 revenue guidance of US$30 million to US$35 million and reported Q2 2026 revenue of US$5.072 million, ahead of Q2 2025’s US$3.527 million, which supported the growth side of the bullish case. Profit loss narrowed from US$22.651 million to US$17.903 million, yet earnings stayed negative, so the profitability and margin uplift in both narratives remained unproven. Overall, the evidence cut both ways.

The key assumption here was rapid progress from higher sales to positive margins. For any similar stock, track not just top-line guidance but also the shift in absolute profit and reported net margin each quarter to see whether growth is turning into the kind of earnings profile the original thesis relied on.

What SES AI’s Lower Price Now Asks You To Believe

SES AI now trades at US$0.83, with this Narrative’s Fair Value sitting above that level, based on a thesis built around ESS, NDAA-compliant drones and the Molecular Universe platform.

The Narrative leans on these lines becoming large enough to offset lost EV services and legal overhang. A buyer today would be weighing whether ESS, drone batteries and Molecular Universe can scale to meaningfully reshape revenue mix and margins within a few years.

"The Molecular Universe platform has moved to MU 3.0 with agentic workflows, support for both lithium and sodium chemistries, and at least one multi year Search in a Box subscription from a major battery manufacturer. This points to a recurring software and services layer that can scale faster than hardware and lift company wide net margins as more enterprise customers convert from trials to paid contracts."

One Narrative disagrees with today's price. → See where this Narrative says SES AI should trade

Go Straight To The Source

This company's disappointment is already part of the story. Your next idea could come from looking where the price and the possibilities still seem far apart. Here are three companies priced below our estimates.

• Company 1 - 41% below our estimate - serves contractors expanding power and communications links for massive data facilities.
• Company 2 - 16% below our estimate - scales a branded teahouse network through faster-growing overseas franchise sales volumes.
• Company 3 - 50% below our estimate - replaces manual hospital billing work with one AI platform for claims processing.

Three companies from the same screener. Open the full list of 38 companies trading below our fair value estimates →

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