Cathie Wood, chief of Ark Investment Management, has spent much of the past several months trimming positions in some of the market’s biggest winners, likely locking in gains after a strong rally.
Now, Wood is making one of her largest purchases in recent months, buying roughly $66 million worth of Nvidia stock as Wall Street continues to be surprised by the relentless gains across AI-related stocks.
In 2025, Wood’s flagship Ark Innovation ETF gained 35.49%, far outpacing the S&P 500’s return of 17.88% in the same period. So far this year, Wood’s flagship Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK) was up roughly 2.68%, trailing the S&P 500’s gain of more than 11%.
Wood gained a reputation after the Ark Innovation ETF delivered a 153% return in 2020. But her style also brings painful losses in bearish markets, as seen in 2022, when the Ark Innovation ETF tumbled more than 60%.
Those swings have weighed on Wood’s long-term gains. As of June 1, the Ark Innovation ETF has delivered a five-year annualized return of -5.93%, while the S&P 500 has an annualized return of 12.58% over the same period, according to data from Morningstar.
Wood expects “great acceleration” brought by tech developments
Wood focuses on high-tech companies across artificial intelligence, blockchain, biomedical technology, and robotics. She thinks these businesses have strong growth potential, though their volatility often causes fluctuations in the Ark’s funds.
According to Morningstar analyst Bella Albrecht, two of Wood’s Ark funds were among the worst-performing ETFs in the first quarter of 2026. The Ark Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) ranked second on the list, while the ARK Innovation ETF placed fifth.
From 2014 to 2024, the Ark Innovation ETF wiped out $7 billion in investor wealth, according to an analysis by Morningstar’s analyst Amy Arnott. That made it the third-biggest wealth destroyer among mutual funds and ETFs in Arnott’s ranking. The analyst hasn’t updated the 2025 ranking.
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In a March 23 Bloomberg podcast, Wood says the global economy is not heading into a downturn, but into what she calls a “great acceleration” driven by AI and other breakthrough technologies.
“We’re not going into the Great Depression, we’re going into the great acceleration,” Wood said, pointing to how past technological revolutions reshaped economic growth.
She noted that global real GDP growth averaged just 0.6% between 1500 and 1900, before the Industrial Revolution lifted it to around 3% for more than a century. Now, she argues, a new wave of innovation could push growth much higher.
“We think [technologies] are going to take growth into the 7 to 8% range,” Wood said, adding that the number may actually be conservative.
Wood says AI is lowering costs across industries
Wood also emphasized that AI is rapidly driving down costs across industries.
“These technologies are deflationary,” she said. “AI training costs are dropping 75% per year, and inference costs are falling as much as 85% to even 98% annually.”
In an earlier letter published in January, Wood rejects the “AI bubble” talk, saying that it “is years away” and that “the most powerful capital spending cycle in history” is coming.
“What once was the cap in spending seems to have become a floor now that the AI, robotics, energy storage, blockchain technology, and multiomics sequencing platforms are ready for prime time,” she said.
But not all investors share Wood’s optimism. In the 12 months through May 29, the Ark Innovation ETF saw roughly $601.57 million in net outflows, according to data from ETF research firm VettaFi.
Cathie Wood buys $67 million of Nvidia stock
On June 2, Wood’s Ark funds bought 300,017 shares of Nvidia (NVDA), according to Ark’s daily trade information. These shares are valued at about $66.8 million based on the latest closing price of $222.28 per share.
In the first quarter of 2026, Wood trimmed her Nvidia position by 17.5%, selling about 219,000 shares, according to data from Stock Circle. Now, she’s buying much more.
Shares of Nvidia are up roughly 19.1% year to date, making it the best-performing stock among the Magnificent 7. Alphabet and Apple follow with gains of 15.8% and 15.6%, respectively.
Magnificent 7 performance ranking:
- NVIDIA (NVDA): +19.10%
- Alphabet (GOOGL): +15.76%
- Apple (AAPL): +15.64%
- Amazon (AMZN): +11.60%
- Tesla (TSLA): -6.11%
- Microsoft (MSFT): -8.61%
- Meta Platforms (META): -9.08%
Nvidia remains at the center of the artificial intelligence boom.
On May 20, the chipmaker reported record first-quarter revenue of $81.6 billion, up 85% from a year earlier, while data center revenue surged 92% to a record $75.2 billion. Non-GAAP gross margin was 75.0%, and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.87.
“Agentic AI has arrived, doing productive work, generating real value and scaling rapidly across companies and industries,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
“Nvidia is uniquely positioned at the center of this transformation as the only platform that runs in every cloud, powers every frontier and open source model, and scales everywhere AI is produced.”
Looking ahead, Nvidia expects second-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $91.0 billion.
Wedbush analysts said the forecast topped prior Wall Street expectations of about $87 billion and slightly exceeded buy-side estimates of more than $90 billion, though management likely left room for another upside surprise in the quarters ahead.
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Wedbush raised its price target on Nvidia to $330 from $300 and maintained an outperform rating on the shares after those results, according to a research note sent to TheStreet.
“While we think the CPU vs. GPU narrative in inference is being overemphasized, we see NVDA’s expectations for Grace/Vera as an impressive reminder that 1) NVDA also makes CPUs and 2) that NVDA’s revenues outside of GPUs are growing at fantastic rates, allowing Nvidia’s revenues to expand at a rate beyond that of accelerator growth alone,” the analyst wrote.
Nvidia is not in the top 10 holdings of Wood’s Ark Innovation ETF.
Top 10 holdings of the Ark Innovation ETF as of June 2, 2026:
- Tesla Inc. (TSLA) 9.86%
- Tempus AI Inc. (TEM) 5.04%
- Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) 5.03%
- CRISPR Therapeutics AG (CRSP) 4.79%
- Robinhood Markets Inc. (HOOD) 4.79%
- Shopify Inc. (SHOP) 4.59%
- Circle Internet Group Inc. (CRCL) 4.17%
- Roku Inc. (ROKU) 4.16%
- Coinbase Global Inc. (COIN) 3.82%
- Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR) 3.36%
Other than buying shares of Nvidia, Wood’s recent trading activity included selling shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), one of Nvidia’s key competitors in AI chips, while adding to her position in Cerebras Systems (CBRS), another AI infrastructure company that recently went public.
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