Cathie Wood talks OpenAI investment and Tesla's robotaxi
OpenAI recently raised $6.6 billion in a new funding round, giving it a valuation of about $157 billion. One firm that has been investing in OpenAI is Ark Invest. Cathie Wood, ARK Invest's CEO and CIO, is betting big on AI. She says OpenAI, along with Anthropic, xAI, Google (GOOG, GOOGL), and Meta Platforms (META) are "stealing the march" in the space. While many investors are concerned about when companies will start seeing returns on their AI investments, Wood is hopeful. When asked about when OpenAI will start to turn a profit, she points to the development of agentic AI, which she thinks will open the door to more profitability, given that companies will be able to charge more for it. Despite some recent executive departures at OpenAI, Wood is confident in the startup's leadership, praising both CEO Sam Altman and CFO Sarah Friar. She notes that "what we witness in companies that are growing very quickly from startup into scaling is you need a different kind of management team." When it comes to competition between AI firms, Wood likes it. "Competition is good. It's going to make this space more competitive and more effective, I think, longer term," she says. On the possibility of a company like OpenAI going public, Wood argues "a lot of companies are staying private longer. They just don't want to deal with the regulation in the public equity markets. And they also don't want to deal with the very short-term oriented or short-term investment time horizon of shareholders in the public equity markets." However, she does think the public market could become more appealing with interest rates coming down and if investors were willing to stomach the longer-term time horizons some of these companies are working with. Watch the video above to hear Wood discuss Tesla (TSLA) and its upcoming robotaxi event. For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Asking for a Trend. This post was written by Stephanie Mikulich.
