Here's Why Cathie Wood's ARK Invest Bumped Stake in AMD, Tesla Despite Massive Price Correction

Cathie Wood has never really done ‘subtle.’ When markets are purring, ARK Invest’s conviction can look like genius. When they’re snarling, it looks—depending on your mood—either brave or wilfully obtuse. This week, with tech investors fretting over frothy valuations and the latest bout of volatility, Wood did what she usually does: she leaned in, not out.

According to a report citing ARK’s daily disclosures, ARK Invest added to two of its most scrutinised names—Advanced Micro Devices and Tesla—despite a sharp correction in parts of the market and a distinctly jumpy mood around ‘AI winners.’ If you’re waiting for Wood to start behaving like a cautious index manager, don’t hold your breath.​

There’s an internal logic to the ARK worldview: the future is not evenly distributed, and the companies building it will look expensive right up until they don’t. Wood’s funds shot to prominence during the pandemic-era rally, and the brand she built then still trades on the same promise—disruptive innovation, unapologetically. That promise has also hardened into a kind of identity. She is the investor who buys when the crowd flinches, then insists the crowd will thank her later.

This latest burst of buying suggests she’s sticking to that script.

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest Doubles Down Despite The Price Correction

ARK boosted its position in AMD by purchasing 141,108 shares across multiple ETFs, with the trade valued at more than $13 million. The timing is telling: it followed AMD’s latest quarterly results, which showed adjusted earnings per share of $1.53 on revenue of $10.27 billion—up 34% year-on-year. Those are not flimsy numbers. They are the sort of figures that would usually buy a tech stock a little peace.

AMD’s growth, according to coverage of the results, was driven by strength in the data centre segment and demand for EPYC processors, with ongoing GPU shipments; gaming revenue was also supported by higher semi-custom chip sales. In other words, the business is doing what it needs to do: sell into the infrastructure layer of modern computing, where AI hype eventually turns into real procurement budgets.​

And yet the market’s reaction was sharp. The same report on ARK’s buying noted AMD shares fell more than 17% on Wednesday as investors grew cautious about the company’s near-term AI outlook, particularly around whether its Instinct GPUs would translate into near-term revenue growth. That’s the modern AI trade in miniature: huge expectations, thin patience. Beat the quarter, miss the mood, get punished anyway.​

Wood clearly decided this was the moment to treat fear as a discount. Bank of America, for its part, argued AMD is positioning itself as a credible merchant AI GPU alternative to Nvidia and that the server CPU business could keep gaining on steady execution and inference demand. It’s a comforting thesis if you already want to believe. It’s also a reminder that in AI, ‘credible alternative’ can mean ‘second place,’ and second place doesn’t always get paid.​

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest Keeps Faith With Tesla And Musk

Then there’s Tesla—the stock that has, for Wood, become something like an article of faith. ARK purchased 35,766 Tesla shares worth more than $15 million, according to the same report. Tesla closed Wednesday down 3.7% at $406.01.​

The enduring fascination here isn’t that Wood buys Tesla. It’s that she buys Tesla as if the story is still early. The report repeated ARK’s long-circulating bull case: Tesla could reach $2,600 per share by 2030, implying more than 600% upside from current levels. Wood has also publicly lionised Musk’s leadership—an enthusiasm that plays well with Tesla die-hards and less well with anyone who thinks hero-worship is a poor substitute for governance.​

On the Street, she’s not alone in bullishness, though she’s certainly among the loudest. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, one of Tesla’s most prominent cheerleaders, has set a 12-month price target of $600 and expects 2026 to be a pivotal year for the company, including an expansion of robotaxis to more than 30 US cities ‘in the near term,’ according to the report.

He also estimated Tesla’s AI opportunity could be worth $1 trillion and suggested regulatory hurdles around full self-driving could ease in early 2026.​

Here is the uncomfortable bit that tends to get glossed over: those claims might be directionally right, but they’re also conveniently elastic. ‘Robotaxis,’ ‘AI opportunity,’ ‘regulatory easing’—they are phrases that can power a valuation for years, even when timelines slip. Investors have learnt that lesson the hard way. Wood, characteristically, seems determined to keep learning it the other way.

Still, you can see why she’s doing it. In a market that punishes hesitation, Wood is selling certainty. Not certainty that prices will go up tomorrow, but certainty that the future she’s been promising—AI everywhere, autonomy everywhere—will eventually pay out. Buying AMD after a bruising sell-off and topping up Tesla after another wobble is not a new strategy for her. It’s the brand, intact.

Whether it’s also good risk management is a different question—and the one ARK holders will keep answering in real time.

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