Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disclosed a multimillion-dollar investment last month in an artificial intelligence company whose stocks exploded in value soon after.
Pelosi’s husband Paul invested in Bloom Energy, a California-based company that provides fuel-cell technology and power systems aimed at meeting the enormous electricity demands of AI data centers.
According to a financial transaction report Pelosi signed Aug. 21, her household made several Bloom Energy purchases in late July.
The transactions included 10,000 shares purchased July 24, along with 100 call options, according to reporting from the New York Post. Another 5,000 shares and 100 additional call options were purchased July 28.
The disclosed value ranges put the combined transactions at a minimum of roughly $3 million, although the actual amount could have been as much as $12 million, because congressional financial disclosure forms use broad dollar ranges.
The July 24 purchases came after Bloom Energy’s stock had suffered a significant decline.
Then came July 28.
That was the same day Bloom Energy reported extremely strong earnings, with annual revenue growth of 165 percent, according to the Post.
Bloom Energy’s stock subsequently took off.
Then, on Sept. 4, another major development arrived: Bloom Energy was announced as a new addition to the S&P 500.
The company is scheduled to join the benchmark index Sept. 21, alongside Everpure and Illumina.
Bloom Energy shares surged following the announcement, with the stock gaining nearly 40 percent over a five-day period, according to the Post.
By Tuesday, Bloom Energy shares were trading around $282.50, compared with $184.89 on July 24, the day of the first Pelosi household purchase.
That’s a striking move in a matter of weeks.
And it makes the timing of the disclosure noteworthy.
Pelosi’s office has said the former speaker does not own stocks and had no knowledge of or subsequent involvement in the transactions.
The trades were made by her husband and reported through the congressional disclosure system as transactions involving a spouse.
In an article about the transactions, financial writer Rich Duprey of 24/7 Wall Street dubbed Pelosi “the queen of capital gains.”
“Pelosi’s trading record in Congress has consistently outpaced the S&P 500 and even Warren Buffett over comparable stretches, fueling suspicion that lawmakers with committee-level oversight enjoy an informational edge,” Duprey observed.
The New York Post said Pelosi “has faced heated blowback for her family’s trading activity — racking up a 65% return on her portfolio in 2023 while her venture capitalist husband made $38 million worth of stock trades in the weeks leading up to President Trump’s inauguration.”
Duprey noted that multiple bills to ban stock trading by members of Congress have been introduced, but they’ve all stalled.
The Democratic former House Speaker’s trades have been so notable that in 2023, GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced one such bill that he dubbed the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act – or the PELOSI Act.
Hawley later met with Democrats and agreed to change the name of the bill to the HONEST Act — Halting Ownership and Non-Ethical Stock Transactions — which allowed enough Democratic support to advance the bill out of committee in July 2025.
Hellbound and Down 
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