Catherine Wood, CEO of ARK Investment Management LLC, speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 conference on Thursday, April 7, 2022, in Miami, Florida, USA.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg |
Cathie Wood's ARK Invest has acquired a stake in Elon Musk's startup xAI, strengthening its big bet on artificial intelligence.
ARK Venture Fund has invested in xAI since Sunday, the St. Petersburg, Florida-based asset manager said in an email to clients Tuesday evening. The fund also invests in OpenAI, the popular player behind ChatGPT, as well as other companies in the industry such as Figure AI and Shield AI.
The xAI startup isn't the only Musk-led company that Wood's venture capital fund is backing. The company has also acquired stakes in Musk's space company SpaceX and social media company X Corp., formerly known as Twitter.
The venture capital fund, launched in September 2022, is aimed at smaller investors who can access the venture capital market with as little as $500.
The fund has invested in nearly 50 companies, most of which are private, and carries a hefty 2.75% management fee.
Musk founded xAI in March 2023 as a challenger to Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Alphabet's Google. Musk also co-founded OpenAI. The company recently raised $6 billion in second round funding, bringing its post-money valuation to $24 billion. The xAI startup reportedly plans to build a supercomputer to power the next version of its AI chatbot, Grok.
The highly regarded Wood is a big AI believer and says AI is the key catalyst in every area of her disruptive innovation strategy.
She called Tesla, with its robotaxi ambitions, “the biggest AI opportunity in the world.” Tesla is the largest holding in her flagship ARK Innovation Fund, with a weighting of 11.5%.
Wood also said that OpenAI is “at the forefront of a Cambrian explosion” in AI capabilities.