Cathie Wood has spent weeks trimming some of the market’s hottest winners. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) kept climbing, and it was one of the several that Wood sold.
In my previous coverage, Cathie Wood sold another $15.6M of the semiconductor stock after it gained 93% this year. Other artificial intelligence names also surged. And yet, ARK Invest kept selling, raising a bigger question on Wall Street. Where exactly was that money going?
Part of the answer to what Wood is buying with her newly freed-up cash arrived quietly in ARK’s latest daily trade disclosures. And it came just as one e-commerce company — Shopify (SHOP) — delivered the kind of earnings report growth investors have been desperately hunting for in 2026.
“Shopify has entered the AI era with a clear edge,” Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said during earnings commentary.
That comment alone may explain why Wood suddenly made one of her largest recent purchases.
Cathie Wood loads up on Shopify stock after earnings beat
ARK Invest purchased roughly 255,804 shares of Shopify across its ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW), and ARK Blockchain & Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF) exchange-traded funds on May 5, according to Investing.com. The total value of the purchase came to approximately $32.6 million.
According to the filings, $20.7 million of the purchase came through the ARKK ETF, representing 7.8% of ARKK’s market value. The previous day, on May 4, 2026, ARKK ETF had also purchased $6.6M of the same Shopify shares.
The May 5, 2026, purchase came immediately after Shopify posted stronger-than-expected first-quarter earnings. According to Shopify’s first-quarter fiscal 2026, revenue surged to $3.17 billion, up 34.3% year-over-year, with a 15% free cash flow margin.
Related: Cathie Wood sells another $15.6M of surging semiconductor stock
The company also reported more than $100 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) in the first quarter for the first time, according to the earnings report.
Meanwhile, Wood was simultaneously reducing exposure elsewhere. On May 5, 2026, ARK sold another 45,917 shares of Advanced Micro Devices, valued at roughly $15.6 million, across ARKK, ARKW, and ARKF, according to TheStreet. That followed broader AMD sales in recent weeks, loading up on Shopify, Meta, and a few others.
Shopify’s AI strategy may be driving Cathie Wood’s conviction
The earnings beat alone likely wasn’t the only reason behind the aggressive buying. Shopify spent much of its earnings call framing itself not just as an e-commerce platform, but as an artificial intelligence infrastructure company for entrepreneurs.
“Shopify has entered the AI era with a clear edge: strong, durable growth and two decades of commerce intelligence. That puts us in a category of one, and we’re about to see that advantage compound throughout 2026,” said Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify.
Management repeatedly emphasized what it called a “compounding advantage” built from two decades of commerce data.
According to Shopify:
- AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores grew 8x year-over-year
- AI now writes more than 50% of Shopify’s internal code
- Large merchants generating over $100 million in GMV have nearly doubled in two years
Source: Shopify Inc. Shopify Earnings Call Via TipRanks
The company is also pushing deeper into what executives described as the “agentic commerce” era – where AI assistants increasingly help consumers discover and buy products.
That strategy includes Shopify’s work with Google on the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open-standard initiative that also includes participation from companies like Amazon, according to management commentary.
For Cathie Wood, whose investment strategy has long centered around disruptive technologies, that positioning may be especially attractive.
Shopify earnings showed strength across nearly every major metric
Beyond the headline numbers, Shopify exceeded Wall Street expectations across several closely watched operating metrics.
Shopify first-quarter 2026 earnings results:
- GMV: $100.74 billion vs $74,750 YOY
- Merchant solutions revenue: $2.42 billion vs $1.74 YOY
- Subscription solutions revenue: $750 million vs $620 YOY
- Merchant solutions gross profit: $944 million vs. $895.7 million expected
- 15% free cash flow margins
- Flat headcount despite rapid growth
- Mid-teens free cash flow margin guidance for the second quarter
Source: Shopify First-Quarter 2026 Earnings Results
Chief Financial Officer Jeff Hoffmeister said the results reflected “broad-based growth across geographies, merchant sizes, and channels.”
Importantly, Shopify is still projecting strong momentum ahead. Management expects second-quarter revenue growth in the “high 20s,” according to the earnings release.
Cathie Wood’s latest rotation highlights a changing AI trade
ARK’s recent moves suggest Wood may be shifting from pure semiconductor momentum into companies applying AI directly into business operations and consumer ecosystems. AMD shares are now up 96% year-to-date, according to Yahoo Finance, after another strong earnings report fueled enthusiasm around AI chips.
But Shopify represents a different type of AI story. Instead of building the infrastructure powering AI, Shopify is trying to embed AI directly into commerce itself, from customer support to product discovery to merchant operations.
That distinction matters. As competition intensifies across the semiconductor space, investors increasingly appear willing to reward companies that can show practical, scalable AI monetization rather than just exposure to the trend itself. And right now it is evident, and therefore fair to say that Shopify seems to be checking many of those boxes.
Related: Cathie Wood buys $28.7 million of tumbling megacap stock
