Cathie Wood: How to Invest in a World Moving This Fast

Cathie Wood (0:00)

We're able to cure disease, and it's already happening. Closer to five years, I think, that we'll have humanoid robots in our homes. We believe we're in the early stages of the AI revolution. Anything that's good for humanity is going to be highly valued. Think about that. What I've just described is 25 years of the rubber band stretching.

Bryce Leske (0:24)

Welcome to another episode of Equity Mates, a podcast where we explore what's possible in the world of investing. If you've just joined us for the very first time, we have a huge episode for you today.

Alec Renehan (0:34)

And I'm Ren, and today we are speaking to Cathie Wood. She's the co-founder and CEO of ARK Invest. She's an investor well known for buying the forefront of innovation. And we're going to be talking all things technology, the pace of disruption and where the world is going.

Bryce Leske (0:51)

Super excited for this one. We're going to get her thoughts on not only AI, which is where we're going to start the conversation, but she's been very bullish on Bitcoin. So we'll get an update on that.

Alec Renehan (1:01)

Bullish on Elon Musk.

Bryce Leske (1:02)

Elon Musk, Robo taxis, humanoid robots, Tesla. She is certainly not one to shy away from making high conviction calls on where the future of technology takes us.

Alec Renehan (1:12)

Or the future Bitcoin price, we did ask.

And Cathie Wood shot to prominence in 2020 and 2021 in that COVID period when the market was ripping and her funds were ripping as well. And then the funds fell in 2022 and 2023 We ask what she learned from that experience, how she manages risk across her portfolios, and what's changed as we enter another technology boom in 2026

Fascinating interview, ARK have funds that invest in both the listed market and venture funds that invest in the unlisted market. So we get a good cross section of companies at different stages in their life cycle. But to summarize it, Cathie's bullish. Cathie's bullish, yes. All right, well, nothing more to say. Let's get to our interview with Cathie Wood.

Bryce Leske (2:01)

Well, Cathie, welcome to Equity Mates.

Cathie Wood (2:02)

Thank you, Bryce. Happy to be here.

Bryce Leske (2:05)

We want to start with a theme from ARK's Big Ideas 2026 report, which is the great acceleration. People obviously intuitively feel the pace of change is accelerating. You just look at what's happened with AI over the last couple of years. But can you give us a sense of just how quickly technology is actually moving?

Cathie Wood (2:22)

We have even been surprised, and it takes a lot to surprise us, because we're doing deep first principles research, and to see AI taking off as quickly as it is, well, we have some great leaders out there who are moving very aggressively. Then we've got China, who's really focused on the space, and I think there's nothing like competition to get us both going and accelerate the pace. I think the reason it's feeling so quickly is it's impacting every industry. So there are three, well, many opportunities, but we think every company can harness AI, and there are huge productivity gains. And what's happening is CEOs know, okay, we have to do this because we could be left out in the competition. So it's coming from the top down, but it's also coming from the bottom up because people, especially in or near entry level jobs are saying, wait a minute, AI could take my job. And so I better use it to become more productive. And I always say, make your boss look brilliant, you know, and make sure I guarantee myself a place in this revolution. So top down, bottom up, buy company. That's the first thing that's happening. But then the other thing that's happening is something called embodied AI.

And what that means is really the physical and the digital worlds coming together.

That is also what's surprising is there's a lot of inertia in certain spaces. There's an accelerated pace of change in certainly transportation, for example, autonomous mobility. It feels very fast, but the first commercialization of a robo taxi was in 2018 It was Waymo in the US. And so as we were doing our research, we thought Tesla would get there before last year, June of last year. Now we're seeing it is moving faster than Waymo.

And it helps us explain or illustrate slowly, slowly, then all at once. It's not as though this happened overnight. The data collection, so Tesla has about 6 million, 7 million robots collecting data. I have two, Model Y and Model 3 Collecting data, I have had my first one since 2018 It's been collecting data, sending it back every day to Tesla. So Tesla could learn our roads through real world driving as opposed to just simulation. So that's been a long time. That was 2018 for me, it was really 2015, so 11 years. So slowly, slowly, and then people say, yeah, yeah, yeah, this will never happen. And then whoo, all at once. And I think that's going to happen with robotaxis. You may not feel it here as much in Australia because you need to build out your charging system for electric vehicles. And it took us a long time. We had a lot of range anxiety too, when it came to electric vehicles. Now, robotaxis are going to be electric. So we needed that charging ecosystem so that they could be ubiquitous and not have to go down. So that's one manifestation of embodied AI. It seems like it might be happening fast now, but it took a lot of years to make it happen. Another one, humanoid robots. Again, Tesla, SpaceX will be, and they'll probably combine, will be at the bleeding edge of that. This is one where wouldn't we all love a humanoid robot at home to do all of our housework?