In a rising market, the iconic growth investor is adding to positions trading well below their earlier highs.
Growth stocks have been rallying in recent weeks, and that’s usually great news for Cathie Wood. The founder, CEO, and stock-picking ace of the Ark Invest family of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) has momentum on her side. Her largest fund has soared nearly 30% since bottoming out last month, but starting lines matter. That same fund would have to more than triple to get back to its all-time highs set four years ago.
Wood did a fair amount of buying as the market moved higher on Wednesday. She added to existing stakes in Nvidia (NVDA 0.94%), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD 3.37%), and CRISPR Therapuetics (CRSP 5.72%). Let’s take a closer look at Wood’s latest purchases.
1. Nvidia
The country’s third most valuable company by market cap is a study in contrasts. It’s a wealth-altering 13-bagger over the past five years, but it has also surrendered 13% of its value in 2025. The developer of graphics processing units and artificial intelligence (AI) chips has fallen 24% since hitting all-time highs earlier this year.
Wood seems to sense that there’s an opportunity here to pick up more shares for almost a quarter less than what they were fetching at their peak four months ago. She added to her Nvidia stake in more than half of Ark’s growth funds on Wednesday. It doesn’t mean that she’s right.
Image source: Getty Images.
Despite the company commanding the pole position in the surging demand for AI chips to propel language learning models to new heights, headwinds have emerged in recent months. The first hit came earlier this year when China’s DeepSeek announced that it could crank out decent generative AI results without springing for the latest Nvidia hardware. The bigger hit these days comes from the global tariffs rollout by the U.S., particularly the standoff with China that has resulted in chipmakers warning of big one-time hits. Nvidia revealed last month that it would have to take a charge for as much as $5.5 billion related to items that are now restricted from sale in China.
Nvidia doesn’t report its quarterly results for another three weeks. Investors are still holding out for strong growth. Analysts see Nvidia topping $43 billion in revenue, a healthy 65% jump. Earnings should rise 46% to hit $0.81 a share. Despite all of the noise, Wall Street pros have only made marginal downward revisions to their growth forecasts from now through the end of fiscal 2027.
Nvidia’s recent pullback against its backdrop of growth makes the shares a potential bargain here. Investors can buy the stock for a little more than 20 times next year’s projected earnings. It’s obviously still growing a lot faster than that. There is a cyclical nature to semiconductor stocks, but the AI revolution is still in the early stages. Wood is a buyer here for Ark. It doesn’t mean that she’s wrong.
2. Advanced Micro Devices
Another company seeing a resurgence in growth on the spike in demand for AI chips is AMD. It reported robust results earlier this week. Revenue rose 36%, marking its fourth straight quarter of accelerating top-line growth. Margins widened, culminating in a 55% jump in earnings per share. A beat on both ends of its income statement initially sent the shares nicely higher in Wednesday’s trading, but it had given back all of those upticks later in the day before recovering to a modest 2% increase by the close.
AMD isn’t getting the same kind of long-term respect as Nvidia. It’s not just that AMD is now warning of just a $1.5 billion charge this year as a result of export restrictions into China. AMD stock has been a laggard relative to the AI leader. In the same five-year span that has transformed Nvidia into a 13-bagger, AMD hasn’t even fully doubled. It’s trading at a lower multiple of 17 times next year’s projected earnings, but it’s not the kind of discount to Nvidia one would expect after years of divergent stock charts. This doesn’t mean that both stocks can’t beat the market from here. There won’t be a sole victor in the AI story.
3. CRISPR Therapeutics
Nvidia and AMD notwithstanding, most of the purchases that Wood made on Wednesday came from her passion for medical tech and gene editing. CRISPR has become one of the 10 largest holdings across all of Ark’s ETFs.
CRISPR is a leader in gene editing, tackling oncology, autoimmune, diabetes, and cardiovascular solutions. Revenue is currently meager, and analysts don’t see a profit here for several years. There is upside if Wood is right. The stock is trading nearly 85% below the all-time high it hit back in early 2021.
Rick Munarriz has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, CRISPR Therapeutics, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.