Cathie Wood, chief of Ark Investment Management, has long been bullish on the future of technology and artificial intelligence.
But she’s also quick to sell when she sees an opportunity to take profits. That’s what she just did with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), selling shares of the chipmaker after the stock surged 16.7% over the past month.
Last year, the 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) is up 16.51% as of writing, while the S&P 500 surged 14.11%, Yahoo Finance data shows.
Wood gained a reputation after the Ark Innovation ETF delivered a rosy 153% return in 2020. But her style also brings painful losses in bearish markets, as seen in 2022, when the ETF tumbled more than 60%.
Those swings have weighed on Wood’s long-term gains. As of Oct. 9, her Ark Innovation ETF has delivered a five-year annualized return of -3.96%, while the S&P 500 had an annualized return of 12.21% over the same period, according to data from Morningstar.
Cathie Wood remains optimistic about AI and tech revolution
Wood focuses on high-tech companies across artificial intelligence, blockchain, biomedical technology, and robotics. She believes these businesses have strong growth potential, but their volatility often causes fluctuations in the Ark’s funds.
Over the decade ended 2025, the Ark Innovation ETF wiped out nearly $5 billion in investor wealth, according to a report by Morningstar’s analyst Amy Arnott. That made it the fourth-biggest wealth destroyer among mutual funds and ETFs in the ranking.
Wood defended her investment strategy after an audience member at a recent summit questioned ARK’s performance compared with the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ).
“I welcome the question. Investors deserve to understand both their returns and the decisions behind them,” Wood said in an Oct. 5 post on X.
She argued that the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) and QQQ are built differently. QQQ tracks the Nasdaq-100 Index, while ARK actively invests in companies it believes are driving disruptive innovation across industries, including healthcare, financial services, and transportation.
Related: Cathie Wood buys $7.8 million of megacap tech stock
Wood has long been optimistic about AI, which she sees as a major driver of productivity, economic growth, and corporate profits in the years ahead. She has also pushed back against recent fears that AI could pose an existential threat to humanity.
Last month, Wood reposted a post by David Sacks on X, saying he makes a good case that the “AI will kill humanity” headlines were orchestrated.
At the same time, Wood acknowledged that AI, like other technologies, can be used for harmful purposes. She said people such as Elon Musk who highlight AI’s potential risks are “doing us a great service,” adding that “half of the solution — including AI — is understanding the problem.”
In August, Wood wrote on X that U.S. corporate profits remain unusually strong, with domestic profits before tax at 13.2% of GDP, a level she said is near multi-decade highs.
Some of that strength came from the massive monetary and fiscal stimulus during the pandemic, but Wood believes another factor is helping sustain margins today: Companies are leaning into AI and productivity gains to protect them.
“I think we’re still early in seeing how far that can go,” she said, adding that companies that use AI effectively will “separate themselves from the ones that don’t.”
Some investors agree with Wood’s optimism. Over the past month through Oct. 8, the Ark Innovation ETF saw roughly $4.3 billion in net inflows, according to data from ETF research firm VettaFi.
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Cathie Wood sells $15.8 million of AMD stock
On Oct. 8 and 9, Wood’s Ark Innovation ETF sold a total of 25,911 shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), according to Ark’s daily trading information sent to TheStreet. These shares were worth about $15.8 million based on the closing price of $608.1 on Oct. 9.
AMD has largely benefited from growing demand for AI chips this year, with its shares surging 183.95% year to date, far outperforming rival Nvidia (NVDA), which has gained just 22.94% over the same period.
Related: Cathie Wood buys $81.5 million of surging semiconductor stock
The chipmaker has secured blockbuster AI deals with OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic over the past year, positioning for billions of dollars in potential revenue as demand for AI infrastructure continues to grow.
However, AMD faces intense competition from rivals such as Nvidia (NVDA) and Intel (INTC). The company also faces risks as major customers develop their own AI chips or could scale back spending on AI infrastructure in the future, potentially reducing demand for AMD’s products.
AMD stock dropped about 3.9% on Oct. 8 and fell another 2% the following day after the Financial Times reported that OpenAI’s annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion in September, about $20 billion below the previously reported $70 billion figure.
Still, Wall Street analysts remain optimistic about AMD stock. On Oct. 6, Citi raised its price target to $800 from $575 and reiterated a buy rating, according to a research note shared with TheStreet.
Citi analyst Atif Malik cited growing demand for computing power from AI agents, including Meta’s Muse, and raised his estimate for the global CPU market to $300 billion by 2030.
“We raise AMD target price to $800 as the primary CPU beneficiary, given Meta is one of the largest customers of AMD’s server business,” Malik wrote.
“Fundamentally, we view agentic AI as a potential orders-of-magnitude driver of compute demand relative to traditional chatbots…. We still expect AMD to be the key beneficiary of the CPU renaissance and Intel as a secondary beneficiary,” he added.
Earlier this year, AMD was among the top 10 holdings of the Ark Innovation ETF. But after Wood’s multiple sales throughout the year, the chipmaker has dropped to 21st place. Nvidia now ranks ahead of AMD as the fund’s 11th-largest holding.
Top 11 holdings in the Ark Innovation ETF by market value and weight as of Oct. 9, 2026:
- Tesla (TSLA) – 9.62%, $661.77 million
- SpaceX (SPCX) – 6.60%, $453.95 million
- Tempus AI (TEM) – 5.00%, $343.99 million
- Circle Internet Group (CRCL) – 4.51%, $310.26 million
- Coinbase (COIN) – 4.07%, $280.20 million
- CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP) – 4.03%, $277.19 million
- OpenAI (private stake) – 3.97%, $272.90 million
- Shopify (SHOP) – 3.27%, $225.07 million
- Twist Bioscience (TWST) – 3.18%, $218.61 million
- Robinhood (HOOD) – 3.17%, $218.18 million
- Nvidia (NVDA) – 3.05%, $209.94 million
Other than selling AMD shares, Wood’s latest trades included selling Alphabet (GOOG), Robinhood (HOOD), SpaceX (SPCX), DraftKings (DKNG), Shopify (SHOP), Personalis (PSNL), and CareDx (CDNA).
She also bought shares of Symbotic (SYM), CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP), Guardant Health (GH), Nurix Therapeutics (NRIX), Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA), Beam Therapeutics (BEAM), Kodiak AI (KDK), Alamar Biosciences (ALMR), Kymera Therapeutics (KYMR), Freenome (FRNM), and Compass Pathways (CMPS).
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