Cathie Wood, executive director and investment director at ARK Investment Management LLC, speaks during the Sooner Than You Think conference in the Brooklyn neighborhood of New York on Tuesday, October 16, 2018.
Alex Flynn | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Cathie Wood said Ark Invest is still optimistic about Tesla and continues to buy shares in the electric carmaker.
“Our confidence in Tesla grew as we did research on what carpool sharing could add. That could limit risks significantly, it’s a much more profitable business than electric vehicles,” said Wood to CNBC’s Bob Pisani on the ETF Edge. on Wednesday. “Even though there is some debate at Tesla whether or not they should launch a human-driven signaling network, we think it would be a very good bridge to their autonomous strategy and we believe they will decide to do so.”
Ark Invest’s main fund – Ark Innovation – raised $ 5.3 billion in tickets this year alone, according to FactSet. The ETF, which is traded under the ARKK ticker, has risen almost 20% this year, after an impressive gain of almost 150% in 2020. Tesla is Ark Innovation’s largest stake, representing more than 8.5% of the total weight of the ETF.
Ark reports on his trades every day and these updates reflect the purchase of Tesla, says Wood. Tesla’s shares fell more than 2% on Wednesday, although they rose slightly in Wood’s comments. Tesla’s shares fell 5% in the last month, but still rose 386% in the last 12 months.
“As time goes by and we learn about their experience in artificial intelligence, the 30 billion kilometers they collected from real-world driving data, no one comes close, not even, I think Google may be in 30 million, compared to 30 billion and we know that in AI [artificial intelligence] world and autonomous is the AI that will win the company with the most data and the best quality data, “added Wood.
Wood said the probability of having successful autonomous vehicles is going up and therefore Ark’s target price will follow at some point.
Wood is a longtime bitcoin bull, with big bets on the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. Wood told CNBC that he expected institutional interest in bitcoin this year, but Tesla’s purchase of the digital currency was a surprise.
Ark Invest has more than $ 58 billion of assets under management.