Catherine Wood, chief executive officer of ARK Investment Management LLC, speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, Florida, U.S., on Thursday, April 7, 2022.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest has taken a stake in Elon Musk’s startup xAI as she deepens her big bet on artificial intelligence.
ARK Venture Fund has invested in xAI as of 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 is also not the only Musk-led company Wood’s venture fund bets on. The firm has also purchased stakes in Musk’s space company SpaceX and social media firm X Corp., formerly known as Twitter.
The venture fund, launched in September 2022, targets smaller investors who can access the venture capital market through it with as little as $500.
The fund has invested in nearly 50 companies, most of which are private. It comes with a hefty management fee of 2.75%.
Musk founded xAI in March 2023 as a challenger to Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Alphabet’s Google. Musk also co-founded OpenAI. It recently raised $6 billion in series B funding, reaching a post-money valuation of $24 billion. The xAI startup is reportedly planning to build a supercomputer to power the next version of its AI chatbot Grok.
The widely followed Wood has been a big AI bull, saying it’s the most important catalyst in every corner of her disruptive innovation strategy.
She has called Tesla, with its robotaxi ambition, “the biggest AI opportunity in the world.” Tesla is her flagship ARK Innovation Fund’s biggest holding, with a weighting of 11.5%.
Wood also said OpenAI is “at the forefront of a Cambrian explosion” in AI capability.