Cathie Wood, chief of Ark Investment Management, is known for making bold bets on fast-moving tech stocks. Sometimes her trades move just as quickly as the stocks themselves.
In the week that began on May 3, Wood sold millions of dollars worth of shares in one high-flying AI company near recent highs, only to turn around days later and buy back the stock after a sharp 11% drop.
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 1.61%, trailing the S&P 500’s gain of more than 8%.
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 May 7, the Ark Innovation ETF has delivered a five-year annualized return of -6.17%, while the S&P 500 has an annualized return of 13.45% over the same period, according to data from Morningstar.
Cathie Wood expects a “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.
In the 12 months through May 7, Wood’s Ark Innovation ETF saw roughly $1.32 billion in net outflows.Getty Images
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.
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.
Related: Cathie Wood buys $14.9 million of tumbling AI stock
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 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 it “is years away” and “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 agree with Wood’s optimism. In the 12 months through May 7, the Ark Innovation ETF saw roughly $1.32 billion in net outflows, with $252 million exiting the fund over the past month, according to data from ETF research firm VettaFi.
Cathie Wood buys $12.9 million of CoreWeave stock
On May 8, Wood’s Ark funds bought 113,076 shares of CoreWeave (CRWV), according to Ark’s daily trade information. These shares are valued at about $12.9 million after the stock tumbled 11% to close at $114.15 that day.
Just days earlier, on May 4 and May 5, Wood had sold a total of 198,572 CoreWeave shares worth roughly $25 million at prices around $127 and $125 per share.
Related: Analysts turn heads with AMD stock forecast after massive rally
Shares of CoreWeave, the Nvidia-backed cloud infrastructure company, are up roughly 60% year-to-date, despite the recent price decline after earnings.
CoreWeave focuses on GPU-powered computing for AI and machine learning workloads. Its data centers run on Nvidia chips, and major customers include Google (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT).
On May 7, CoreWeave issued weaker-than-expected second-quarter revenue guidance, which caused a decline in the stock price the next day.
The company reported an adjusted loss of $1.12 per share, wider than analysts’ expectations for a 90-cent loss. Revenue came in at $2.08 billion, topping estimates of $1.97 billion and more than doubling from $981.8 million a year earlier.
For the second quarter, CoreWeave projected revenue of $2.45 billion to $2.6 billion. The midpoint of that range fell below Wall Street estimates of $2.69 billion, according to CNBC. The company maintained its full-year 2026 revenue outlook of $12 billion to $13 billion.
CoreWeave’s CEO, Mike Intrator, said on the earnings call that the company has now reached “hyperscale.”
“We have reached hyperscale with more than 3.5 gigawatts of contracted power, up more than 400 megawatts this quarter alone, with the substantial majority expected to be online by the end of 2027,” he said.
“Our core customers, historically hyperscalers and foundation labs are deepening their commitment to us while an entirely new wave of enterprises are arriving and demanding access to CoreWeave’s platform at scale.”
After the earnings report, Bank of America reiterated a buy rating and $140 price target on CoreWeave stock. Analysts said the weaker near-term guidance was mainly tied to the timing of new data center capacity coming online, while revenue growth is still expected to accelerate sharply in the second half of 2026.
“We expect operating margin to improve sequentially throughout 2026, reaching 8% for FY26, driven by the progress in capacity coming online,” the analysts wrote in a research note sent to TheStreet.
The analysts said CoreWeave continues to add active power capacity and is growing its backlog by roughly $30 billion from the prior quarter, with inferencing accounting for more than half of CoreWeave’s compute usage, “which speaks to the visibility and longevity of its revenues,” the analysts said.
Fund manager buys and sells
“We expect inferencing to continue to be the primary source of evolving demand, as evidenced by Anthropic’s impressive ARR growth,” Bank of America added.
CoreWeave is not in the top 10 holdings of Wood’s Ark Innovation ETF.
Top 10 holdings of the Ark Innovation ETF as of May 8, 2026:
