Cathie Wood buys $36.1 million of tumbling tech stock

Cathie Wood , CEO of Ark Investment Management, is known for buying high-growth stocks soon after they go public, especially when share prices pull back after an early rally.

That's exactly what she's doing with SpaceX this week, adding more than $36 million worth of the newly public stock as it trades below its IPO price for the first time.

In 2025, the flagship Ark Innovation ETF gained 35.49%, far outpacing the S&P 500 's return of 17.88% in the same period. So far this year, Wood's flagship Ark Innovation ETF ( ARKK ) is down 1.43% year to date, while the S&P 500 surged 10.13 % as of this writing, Yahoo Finance data show.

Wood gained a reputation after the Ark Innovation ETF delivered a 153% return in 2020. But her style also brings painful losses in bearish markets, as seen in 2022, when the Ark Innovation ETF tumbled more than 60%.

Those swings have weighed on Wood's long-term gains. To date, her Ark Innovation ETF has delivered a five-year annualized return of -7.16% , while the S&P 500 has an annualized return of 11.67% over the same period, according to data from Morningstar .

Wood focuses on high-tech companies across artificial intelligence, blockchain , biomedical technology, and robotics. She thinks these businesses have strong growth potential, though their volatility often causes fluctuations in the Ark's funds.

From 2014 to 2024, the Ark Innovation ETF wiped out $7 billion in investor wealth, according to a March 2025 analysis by Morningstar's analyst Amy Arnott . That made it the third-biggest wealth destroyer among mutual funds and ETFs in Arnott's ranking. The analyst hasn't updated her ranking.

Wood believes investors have been focusing on the wrong signals as they assess the outlook for inflation , interest rates, and stocks.

Related: Cathie Wood buys $22.8 million of surging tech stock

In a June post on X (the former Twitter), Wood said the bond market increasingly reflects the deflationary impact of technological innovation, particularly artificial intelligence, rather than the inflation risks many investors still fear.

Wood pointed to the continued flattening of the Treasury yield curve, despite a sharp rise in oil prices over the past year. In previous cycles, she noted, an energy shock of that magnitude would have pushed long-term yields higher.

Wood believes the bond market is "discounting something much more powerful: the deflationary impact of technological innovation, particularly artificial intelligence, which is beginning to increase productivity across broad swaths of the economy."

She also said easing tensions with Iran and a decline in oil prices could push inflation even lower.

"The next phase of this cycle could be characterized by accelerating growth, declining inflation, falling interest rates, and a strengthening U.S. dollar," Wood said. "That combination would create a remarkably supportive backdrop for innovation-led equities and the technologies driving the next productivity boom."

But not all investors agree with Wood's optimism. Over the past 12 months through July 15, the Ark Innovation ETF saw roughly $1.2 billion in net outflows, according to data from ETF research firm VettaFi .

On July 13 and 15, Wood's Ark funds bought 276,056 shares of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX), also known as SpaceX, according to Ark's daily trade information. Based on the price of $130.93 as of writing, the shares are valued at about $36.1 million.

Wood has been an aggressive buyer of SpaceX this month. Including the latest purchases, Ark has acquired a total of 624,781 SpaceX shares in July, with the stake now valued at approximately $81.8 million.