Cathie Wood, the Ark Invest chief executive renowned for backing disruptive technologies, has deployed her signature contrarian playbook during the latest tech market rout, building positions in three high-growth artificial intelligence companies across the sector’s value chain between June 23 and June 26.
The Nasdaq Composite notched five consecutive losing sessions, wrapping last week with a 4.6% decline that compressed valuations across the broader growth stock universe. The pullback offered Wood a window to add exposure spanning space-based AI infrastructure, enterprise AI software, and AI compute chips — a sweep that reinforces her long-held bullish stance on the AI ecosystem.
Topping her shopping list is Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX), the Elon Musk-led aerospace group that debuted on the Nasdaq on June 12 at an offer price of $135 a share. The stock rallied nearly 20% in its first trading day before retreating more than 20% from its post-IPO peak amid the wider market downturn.
Wood topped up her SpaceX stake on June 26, her first dip-buying increment since Ark funds established initial positions on listing day. A long-time backer of the company via the Ark Venture Fund during its private era, Wood now counts SpaceX as the largest holding in the Ark Space & Defense Innovation Fund and a core position in her flagship Ark Innovation Fund.
While synonymous with reusable rocket launch services, SpaceX has built out parallel businesses in satellite connectivity and AI-enabled solutions, with long-range ambitions including orbital data centers that will depend on advanced AI capabilities and substantial capital investment.
Ark also accumulated shares of Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR) across three of its funds on June 25 and 26. The enterprise AI software leader has been a primary beneficiary of the AI boom, powered by its Artificial Intelligence Platform, or AIP, which lets government and commercial clients unify disparate data sets to guide strategy and high-impact operational decisions.
Palantir has posted double-digit revenue growth quarter after quarter, driven by a blistering expansion of its U.S. commercial customer roster — from a handful of clients a few years ago to more than 600 today. The stock is the 10th-biggest holding in the Ark Blockchain and Fintech Innovation Fund.
The longest buying streak in Wood’s latest round of deployments belongs to Cerebras Systems Inc. (CBRS), an AI chip startup widely framed as a challenger to sector behemoth Nvidia. Ark added to its holding over four straight sessions starting June 23.
Cerebras, which went public in May and saw its shares surge 68% on debut, has also pulled back sharply from its highs alongside the rest of the tech complex. The company builds wafer-scale processors that pack enormous compute and memory capacity onto a single chip, delivering outsized speed gains for AI training workloads.
First-quarter 2026 revenue at Cerebras leaped 92% year over year to a record $190 million — still a sliver of Nvidia’s multibillion-dollar quarterly haul, but a clear marker of accelerating market adoption. Cerebras ranks 25th among 47 holdings in the Ark Innovation Fund, sitting alongside chip peers Nvidia at No. 21 and Advanced Micro Devices at No. 4 in a tiered wager on both incumbents and up-and-comers.
The buying spree aligns with Wood’s well-documented investment philosophy: using broad market selloffs as opportunities to load up on companies she sees as future technology winners. She has long maintained that sustained progress on transformative technological goals will translate to earnings growth and share price appreciation over multiyear horizons.
By stacking up positions across the full AI stack — from hardware to software to frontier orbital infrastructure — in a single pullback window, Wood has doubled down on her view that artificial intelligence remains the defining disruptive growth theme of the decade.
