Cathie Wood's 2026 Vision: 7% GDP Growth, Rising AI Demand, US vs. China, Robotaxis, and Bitcoin w/ Salim Ismail, AWG & Dave Blundin | EP #226

Peter Diamandis (0:00)

Your forecast of 7% global GDP growth, it's sort of a singularity event.

Cathie Wood (0:05)

AI is moving faster than we expected. I think the 7% plus is conservative.

Alexander Wissner-Gross (0:12)

ARK Invest, Cathie Wood.

SPEAKER_4 (0:13)

The founders to EO and CIO of ARK Invest, Cathie Wood.

Salim Ismail (0:16)

The queen of innovation.

Cathie Wood (0:18)

Every technology revolution has been accompanied by a step function increase in GDP growth. And so here we are, robotics, energy storage, AI, blockchain technology, multi-omic sequencing. It's nothing that anyone living today has seen before.

Peter Diamandis (0:36)

Your prediction of getting to a million dollars of Bitcoin.

Cathie Wood (0:39)

That's our bull case, one and a half million in 2030 If you look at what's happened historically, certainly the last two cycles, gold has led Bitcoin. So we think Bitcoin is getting ready for another big run.

Alexander Wissner-Gross (0:53)

You've, I think, put your finger on a point I've never heard anyone else articulate, which is.

David Blundin (1:01)

Now that's the Moonshot, ladies and gentlemen.

Peter Diamandis (1:06)

Everybody, welcome to Moonshots and a special episode of WTF Just Happened in Tech here with Cathie Wood, the founder and CEO of ARK Invest to talk about ARK Invest 2026 Big Ideas Report here with my Moonshot mates, DB2, AWG and Mr. EXO. That's what I want to call you, Salim, Mr. EXO, give you a three letter initial. This is the podcast that is for us the number one in the world on tech, getting you future ready, getting you ready for the supersonic tsunami coming our way. Cathie, good morning to you, my friend.

Cathie Wood (1:41)

Good morning, Peter. I'm so honored to be a part of WTF.

Peter Diamandis (1:46)

Yeah, for sure. And God Almighty, you put out an amazing 2026 Big Ideas Report. We're going to drop the link in the show notes here for people to get their own copy. And we've selected about 20 slides or so out of, I don't know, 80, 100 of them that you have, just to talk about it with the Moonshot mates here. And it's so important. I mean, can you imagine how fast things are going? I mean, is it still shocking to you?

Cathie Wood (2:16)

You know, we have been expecting the world to change at a faster than expected pace, but AI is moving faster than we expected, which is really saying something, because we were pushing the envelope on that one.

Peter Diamandis (2:31)

Amazing.

David Blundin (2:32)

Do you remember, Cathie, do you remember Mary Meeker used to do this deck when the internet was exploding? And it became the guidepost for everybody in terms of, you know, anticipating what was coming next. And boy, that was just epic. This deck has actually taken over that role in this much more accelerated timeframe. It's really, everyone listening to the pod, go to the link and find the full deck, because we're only going to have time to go through, what, 18 slides or so. There's so much more in there. This is really pretty epic.

Cathie Wood (2:59)

Yeah, thank you, thank you so much.

Mary Meeker was our inspiration. 2017 is when we started. Mary Meeker's reports, yes, were very internet centric, and they were focused on what had happened. Meaning, it was full of incredible data. We wanted to go a step further and make at least five-year projections. That's our investment time horizon. And so, it forced us into Wright's Law even more aggressively. And, Peter, you and I have talked about that. I don't know if you want to go through it again.

Peter Diamandis (3:40)

We have.

David Blundin (3:42)

Well, hey, the world owes you a debt of gratitude for doing that, because we talked to Ray Kurzweil last week. Being a futurist and predicting the future in the age of AI takes serious guts.

And you're right. The Mary Meeker view is always kind of one year in the future, three years in the past. To try and look five years in the future now and make predictions, it's so valuable for the audience, and very, very few people are willing to do it. And I know you take a lot of darts when you do that, and Peter knows this, too. Ray Kurzweil knows it like more than anybody, but it's so valuable for the audience. So you're crazy if you don't click on the link and check it out.

Cathie Wood (4:14)

Oh, thank you so much. I do want to say, first and foremost, I'm standing on the shoulders of an incredible research team. Brett Winton, who is our chief futurist, and then directors and analysts. And it's very interesting how AI is changing our research and how much more we can do now because of AI.