Cathie Wood

Cathie Wood
Born	Catherine Duddy 1955
Birthplace	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	CEO and CIO of ARK Invest
Known for	Founding ARK Invest; disruptive innovation investing; ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK)
Education	University of Southern California (BS)
Spouse(s)	Robert Wood (divorced)
Children	3

Catherine Duddy Wood (born 1955), known professionally as Cathie Wood, is an American investor, entrepreneur, and the founder, chief executive officer (CEO), and chief investment officer (CIO) of ARK Invest, an investment management firm headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, that focuses on disruptive innovation. Wood founded ARK Invest in 2014 after a career spanning more than three decades in asset management, including senior positions at major financial institutions. She became one of the most prominent figures in the investment world during the late 2010s and early 2020s, largely due to the performance of her flagship exchange-traded fund (ETF), the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), which attracted significant attention for its concentrated bets on companies in sectors such as artificial intelligence, genomics, robotics, energy storage, and blockchain technology. Wood's investment philosophy centers on identifying companies positioned to benefit from technological convergence and long-term innovation trends. While her fund received accolades for strong performance in 2017, 2020, and 2023, it has also been the subject of criticism, with Morningstar identifying it as the third highest "wealth destroyer" investment fund from 2014 to 2023, estimating that it lost US$7.1 billion of shareholder value over that decade.

Early Life

Catherine Duddy was born in 1955 in Los Angeles, California. Her father was an immigrant to the United States who served in the United States Air Force and later worked as a radar systems engineer, an occupation that exposed the young Wood to technology and engineering concepts from an early age. Growing up in a household shaped by her father's technical career, Wood developed an interest in both economics and innovation that would later define her investment philosophy.

Wood has spoken publicly about her upbringing and the values instilled by her parents, including an emphasis on education and intellectual curiosity. Her father's immigrant experience also contributed to what she has described as an appreciation for the opportunities available in the United States, themes that have recurred in her public commentary on entrepreneurship and economic policy.

Wood has described herself as a person of Christian faith, and she has stated publicly that her religious beliefs play a role in her approach to investing and her broader worldview. She has cited her faith as a source of conviction in her investment strategy, particularly during periods of significant market drawdowns when her funds experienced substantial losses.

Education

Wood attended the University of Southern California (USC), where she studied economics and finance. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree, having been mentored by Arthur Laffer, the economist known for the Laffer curve and his influence on supply-side economics. Laffer's emphasis on the economic effects of innovation and the role of tax policy in incentivizing growth had a formative impact on Wood's thinking. She has credited Laffer with shaping her understanding of how technological innovation drives economic productivity and long-term market returns.

Career

Early Career

Following her graduation from USC, Wood entered the investment management industry and spent the next several decades building her career at established financial institutions. She worked at Jennison Associates, a subsidiary of Prudential Financial, where she served as a portfolio manager and analyst. Over the course of approximately 18 years at the firm, she developed expertise in growth investing and gained experience managing substantial portfolios focused on innovative technology companies.

After her tenure at Jennison Associates, Wood joined AllianceBernstein, one of the largest global investment management firms, where she served as CIO of Global Thematic Strategies. At AllianceBernstein, she managed approximately $5 billion in assets and focused on identifying investment opportunities in sectors undergoing technological transformation. During her time at AllianceBernstein, Wood became increasingly convinced that the traditional asset management industry was too slow to recognize the potential of disruptive innovation, an insight that ultimately motivated her to establish her own firm.

Founding of ARK Invest

In January 2014, at the age of 58, Wood founded ARK Investment Management LLC, known as ARK Invest, with the stated mission of investing exclusively in disruptive innovation. The firm's name "ARK" stands for Active Research Knowledge, reflecting Wood's emphasis on intensive, bottom-up research as the basis of her investment decisions. The decision to leave an established firm and start a new venture in her late fifties was noted by financial media, particularly as Wood was among a relatively small number of women to found and lead an asset management firm.

ARK Invest received seed capital from Bill Hwang, a former Tiger Management analyst who ran Archegos Capital Management. Wood confirmed this relationship publicly, stating that Hwang provided seed capital for ARK's first four ETFs. Hwang's Archegos Capital Management later collapsed in March 2021 in one of the largest margin-call events in financial history, though this occurred well after his initial investment relationship with ARK Invest.

The firm launched its first suite of ETFs in October 2014, offering investors access to concentrated portfolios built around themes of disruptive innovation. These initial funds covered areas including genomics, autonomous technology, next-generation internet, industrial innovation, and financial technology. The ETF structure was a deliberate choice; Wood believed it offered greater transparency and tax efficiency compared to traditional mutual funds, and she viewed it as aligned with her philosophy of openness and accessibility in investing.

ARK Innovation ETF and Rise to Prominence

ARK Invest's flagship fund, the ARK Innovation ETF (ticker: ARKK), became one of the most closely watched investment vehicles in the United States during the late 2010s and early 2020s. The fund's strategy centered on holding a concentrated portfolio of companies that Wood and her team believed would benefit from convergence among multiple innovation platforms, including artificial intelligence, DNA sequencing, robotics, energy storage, and blockchain.

The fund's performance in 2020 was particularly notable. During a year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and significant market volatility, ARKK returned approximately 150%, making it one of the best-performing actively managed ETFs in the United States that year. In December 2020, ARKK surpassed the JPMorgan Ultra-Short Income ETF to become the largest actively managed ETF in the United States, a milestone that was reported by Bloomberg News and CNBC.

Wood's public profile grew significantly during this period. She became a frequent guest on financial news programs and was widely covered in major publications including Bloomberg News, Barron's, Forbes, and the Financial Times. Her willingness to make bold, specific price predictions—including a then-controversial $4,000 price target for Tesla stock—attracted both admirers and critics in the financial community.

Investment Philosophy and Approach

Wood's investment approach at ARK Invest is characterized by several distinctive elements that set it apart from conventional asset management practices. The firm employs what it describes as a research ecosystem that combines traditional financial analysis with insights from technology experts, academic researchers, and open-source community contributors.

Bloomberg News reported in September 2020 that one of the factors contributing to ARK's approach was the diversity of its research team, which included analysts with non-traditional backgrounds such as engineering, computer science, and molecular biology, in addition to conventional finance professionals. This interdisciplinary approach was described as central to the firm's ability to evaluate companies operating at the intersection of multiple technology sectors.

Wood has articulated her investment philosophy through the concept of "innovation platforms," arguing that the convergence of technologies such as artificial intelligence, energy storage, robotics, genomics, and blockchain would create investment opportunities similar in magnitude to the transformations wrought by the telephone, automobile, and electricity in the early 20th century. She has consistently argued that traditional financial models, which tend to rely on backward-looking valuation metrics, systematically undervalue companies positioned to benefit from these long-term shifts.

ARK Invest also distinguished itself through its transparency practices. The firm publishes its daily trades, a practice that is unusual in the asset management industry and one that attracted both praise for its openness and criticism from those who argued it could invite front-running by other market participants.

Expansion and Subsequent Challenges

Following the success of 2020, ARK Invest continued to expand its product offerings. In January 2021, Bloomberg News reported that Wood's vision for a space exploration ETF had sent related stocks soaring in anticipation of the fund's launch. The firm had also made significant investments in companies such as Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by Richard Branson, with Bloomberg reporting that ARK's investment gave Branson a $300 million boost.

However, 2021 and 2022 proved challenging for ARK Invest. Rising interest rates, a broad rotation away from growth stocks toward value stocks, and declining prices in many of the high-growth technology and biotech companies that comprised ARK's core holdings led to substantial losses across the firm's funds. The ARK Innovation ETF experienced a drawdown of approximately 75% from its peak in February 2021 through December 2022, representing one of the largest declines among major ETFs during that period.

Wood maintained her conviction throughout the downturn, arguing that the selling was driven by macroeconomic factors rather than fundamental deterioration in the businesses she held. She continued to add to positions that declined in price, a strategy she described as buying innovation at increasingly favorable valuations.

The Financial Times and Morningstar reported on the cumulative impact of these losses. Morningstar identified the ARK Innovation ETF as the third highest "wealth destroyer" fund from 2014 to 2023, estimating that it had destroyed approximately US$7.1 billion in shareholder value over that decade. This designation reflected not only price declines but also the timing of investor flows, with large sums entering the fund near its peak in early 2021 and subsequently experiencing significant losses.

Corporate Governance and Ownership

In December 2020, Bloomberg News reported that a long-standing control dispute over ARK Invest was nearing resolution, which Wood described as "lifting a cloud" over the firm. The dispute had involved Resolute Investment Managers, which had an ownership stake in ARK Invest and certain rights over the firm's operations. The resolution allowed Wood to consolidate her control over the company and its strategic direction.

Recent Investment Activity

As of early 2026, ARK Invest remained active in portfolio management, with Wood continuing to make concentrated bets on companies she identified as positioned to benefit from disruptive innovation. In February 2026, ARK Invest purchased approximately 35,600 shares of CoreWeave, a cloud computing company, across its ETF suite shortly before the company's earnings report. The firm also invested approximately $24 million in Figma, a design software company, as part of a broader portfolio adjustment that also included trimming its position in DraftKings.

Wood continued to add to ARK's position in Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), with reporting indicating that the purchases reflected her thesis on the long-term growth potential of the semiconductor company amid rising demand for AI computing hardware. Additionally, ARK Invest purchased over $70 million in cryptocurrency-related stocks during a period of Bitcoin price weakness in early February 2026, including approximately $32.7 million of Robinhood (HOOD), $14.6 million of CoreWeave, $9.4 million of Circle, and additional positions in other digital asset-related companies.

Yahoo Finance noted in February 2026 that Wood had purchased shares of Robinhood on a price dip, consistent with her established pattern of adding to positions during market pullbacks.

Personal Life

Wood was married to Robert Wood, with whom she had three children. The couple later divorced. Robert Wood died in 2018, as recorded in an obituary published in the Stamford Advocate.

Wood has been open about the role of her Christian faith in both her personal and professional life. In interviews, she has described her decision to found ARK Invest as partly motivated by her religious convictions, stating that she believed innovation was central to God's work and that investing in disruptive technologies aligned with her spiritual values.

Wood has been identified in media reports as a supporter of Donald Trump during his political career. The South China Morning Post noted her political alignment in a 2021 profile that described various facets of her public identity, including her religious beliefs, her popularity on Reddit, and her political views.

She has described elements of her daily routine in media interviews, including a typical workday that begins early and involves significant engagement with ARK's research team and open-source research processes.

Recognition

Wood's career has attracted both significant acclaim and criticism. She was included on Forbes' list of American Self-Made Women, recognized for founding ARK Invest after the age of 40 and building it into one of the most prominent investment firms in the United States.

Barron's profiled Wood in a March 2021 cover story under the headline "ARK's Cathie Wood Disrupted Investment Management. She's Not Done Yet," noting her role in reshaping how retail and institutional investors approached thematic and innovation-focused investing. The magazine highlighted her unconventional background among asset management firm founders and her willingness to challenge consensus views on technology valuations.

In December 2020, the ARK Innovation ETF was recognized as the largest actively managed ETF in the United States after surpassing JPMorgan's Ultra-Short Income ETF, a milestone reported by both Bloomberg News and CNBC. The achievement reflected both the fund's investment performance and the enormous inflows it attracted during 2020.

However, Wood's record has also been subject to substantial criticism. Morningstar's assessment of ARKK as the third-largest wealth destroyer among investment funds from 2014 to 2023 represented one of the most prominent negative evaluations of her track record. Critics have pointed to the fund's extreme volatility, its concentrated positions in speculative companies, and the disparity between the fund's time-weighted returns and the dollar-weighted returns actually experienced by investors who frequently bought at peak valuations.

Legacy

Wood's influence on the investment management industry extends beyond the performance of her specific funds. She is credited with popularizing thematic ETF investing and demonstrating that actively managed ETFs could compete with passive index funds for investor attention and capital. Her firm's emphasis on transparency, including the publication of daily trade data and open-source research models, represented a departure from the norms of the asset management industry.

As one of the few women to found and lead a major asset management firm, Wood's career has been noted in discussions about gender representation in finance. Forbes highlighted her as one of America's notable self-made women founders, specifically recognizing that she started ARK Invest after age 40, at a stage when many professionals in the industry would be unlikely to undertake such an entrepreneurial venture.

Wood's investment thesis on Tesla—one of her earliest and most prominent convictions—became a touchstone for broader debates about growth investing, valuation methodology, and the role of innovation in equity markets. Her willingness to publish specific, long-term price targets for individual companies, while controversial, influenced how other investors and firms communicated their investment theses publicly.

The trajectory of ARK Invest's assets under management—from a small startup in 2014 to managing tens of billions of dollars at its peak—and the subsequent decline in assets following the drawdown in growth stocks, has been cited as a case study in the dynamics of investor sentiment, the risks of concentrated thematic investing, and the challenges of managing capacity in a high-conviction investment strategy. As of 2026, Wood continued to lead ARK Invest and to articulate her thesis that disruptive innovation would drive outsized long-term investment returns, maintaining the same conviction-driven approach that characterized her career from its outset.