World's No.1 Investing Expert: The Big Shift Is Coming And This Investment Could Be 15x in 5 Years! - Cathie Wood
Guests: Cathie
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
§01Transcript — part 1
This message is brought to you by Apple Card. It’s a great time to apply for an Apple Card. You’ll love earning unlimited daily cash on every purchase. That includes 3% daily cash when you buy the latest iPhone, AirPods, or Apple Watch from Apple. Through this special referral offer, when you get a new Apple Card, you can earn bonus daily cash. To qualify, you must apply at apple.co/getdailycash. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Offer may not be available elsewhere. Terms and limitations apply.
I’ve read through a decade of your research to figure out what the best investment is so anyone can get rich in the future. And you’ve predicted that this will grow by at least 5,000%.
Yes, and my conviction is so high because of what I do on a day-to-day basis.
Is there a woman on planet Earth that manages more money from an investing capacity than you?
Maybe not. I’m overseeing nearly $30 billion.
Okay, so I might have $500. What should I be doing with that?
So this is all you need to know.
Cathie Wood built a multi-billion dollar fund by spotting trends before anyone else. And now, with over 40 years of market insight, she’s showing you how and where to invest too.
AI is the biggest technological disruption in history. And this incredible rate of change is making people uncomfortable. But if you are on the right side of change, investment opportunities and job opportunities are going to be enormous. But people don’t know what to do. For example, many people think Apple is a very safe investment. It's probably going to be disrupted by artificial intelligence. But yet, Tesla is going to be the biggest.
You've invested just over $2 billion in Tesla?
Yeah, because Tesla is the largest AI project on Earth. So AI has to be a top priority, not an afterthought.
So I’ve got questions. What’s your top 10 public stocks that anybody could invest in? What’s the philosophy towards investing that will make one rich over time? And then if I want to invest in AI, how should I be investing my money?
According to our research, these investments will go up more than tenfold in the next 5 to 10 years and create incredible opportunities for investors. So, number one...
Quick one. Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it’s a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can, now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you.
Cathie Wood, is there a woman on planet Earth that manages more money from an investing capacity than you?
Well, there’s probably not someone overseeing, yes, nearly $30 billion. But I know there are teams out there, including women, that manage maybe a lot more than that.
What is it that you do?
Invest in companies that are technologically enabled and that are going to transform the world as we know it: robotics, energy storage, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and multiomics sequencing in the life science space. The last is the most complicated.
And how long have you been an investor?
I started when I was 20 years old at a company called Capital Group. I was introduced to the firm by Art Laffer. Now Art Laffer, he’s one of the most important economists of our time. He created something called the Laffer Curve. He’s advised most presidents since President Nixon, and he’s advising President Trump as well.
And how is these five big innovation platforms that you speak of, how is that going to have an impact on the average person's life? Why do they need to know this stuff? How is it going to change their decision-making and change their career?
Now that the world is moving so quickly into this new world, and Bitcoin has become so successful an investment, many people are trying to figure out, okay, how do I get involved with the new world? And when I say get on the right side of change, we think there's going to be a lot of disruption to the traditional world order. And when I say that in terms of people understanding what I mean, I think many people think Apple is a very safe investment because of its huge hoard of cash, very successful smartphone, and number one market share of smartphones in terms of profitability by far.
And yet, we can tell you—and this was one of what's called the Mag Six that led the stock market over the last few years—the market was very narrowly focused on this ilk of stock. And we were saying, you know what? Apple is probably going to be disrupted by artificial intelligence. And one of the reasons we started asking questions very early is what is the ultimate mobile device? Ultimately, it's going to be an autonomous vehicle. Apple should have been all over that, and they were trying, and we saw one management turnover after another. This is an AI project, and what we were learning as they were turning that team over time and again is they weren't getting AI right. They were not positioning correctly.
You're concerned for Apple?
I think Apple has so much cash and such a loyal customer base, it will be fine. But maybe its revenue growth has slowed to almost nothing. And so maybe it'll be a mature cash cow. That's not what we do. We invest in technologically enabled disruptive innovation. AI is the biggest technological disruption in history. And if they're not going to get it right, we're not going to be there.
So if I want to invest in AI, if I agree with you, Cathie, and I say AI is the biggest technological wave coming into shore and the biggest opportunity, how should I be investing my money in your view? How are you investing your money to capitalize on AI?
Many people used to invest in AI through one stock. That was Nvidia. That was the "check the box, I own the GPU" chip manufacturer, which is the most important chip manufacturer in the AI age. And its valuation—meaning its price relative to earnings—really got up to very heady levels. And we were saying at the time, well, if Nvidia's valuation is correct, there are going to be a lot of other winners. Who are they? Well, our largest position in the flagship strategy, ARKK, is Tesla. And as we were trying to help people understand why we were swapping away from Nvidia to stocks like Tesla and Palantir, which is a software provider, we were trying to explain that this new world around AI is going to happen very quickly. Tesla is the largest AI project on Earth. I posted that on X and Elon liked it, so it must be true.
But it is true if our research is correct. We believe that the entire ecosystem associated with autonomous taxi networks is going to be worth $8 to $10 trillion in terms of revenue generation in the next 5 to 10 years. And if you want to put that in context, the entire GDP of the world today is about $130 trillion. So $10 trillion is going to move the needle.
Tesla are launching their first Cybercab, I believe, in Austin in June, potentially?
Yes, it so the Cybercabs will launch next year, but in Austin in June, those will be Model Ys. And I'm looking to buy another Model Y because it will, in effect, be a Cybercab. And if I chose to, I could have my Model Y drive me to work and then let it out for the day and earn money on it, have it pick me up at the end of the night. And some people will do that, and Tesla will provide the platform for that.
I think a lot of people don't realize just how much of the economy is about driving: taxis, deliveries, all these kinds of things. It's the single biggest employer in the world.
Yes, transportation broadly defined, yes. And it's not just on the ground, of course. As we've studied autonomous taxis moving forward, we believe the cost of transportation will come down fairly dramatically. So in the US today, an Uber costs roughly $2 to $4 per mile. At scale—now this may not be for 5 to 10 years, but this is the direction that Tesla certainly is headed—we believe that Tesla will be able to offer a service for 25 cents per mile. Because of that, we think there will be much more congestion on the roads. When you cut the price of something, you get more of it. That led us into the air. And so we've been studying eVTOLs.
What's an eVTOL?
eVTOL is an electric vehicle takeoff and landing. Like a drone, but for people. So we own Archer in our portfolio. And of course, AI is a part of this new world as well, and it's a part of the defense world as well, as we are trying to save our soldiers and move out there with autonomous drones. So autonomous mobility on the ground, in the skies, ultimately on the water.
So Tesla.
So that's one big, we think that's going to be the biggest in the short term in terms of revenue generation, the biggest application of AI. We think the most profound application of AI is going to be in healthcare. Because of AI—and this is already beginning to happen—we are able to diagnose cancer with a blood test in stage one. Think about that. If you discover cancer in stage one, you can save most people. Crazy. And maybe even before stage one. Why? This is the convergence of sequencing technologies—so DNA, RNA, protein sequencing technologies—and then the third technology that is breakthrough and already making a difference is CRISPR gene editing. The convergence of those three technologies is beginning to cure disease. So a company called CRISPR Therapeutics, which is one of the largest in our ARKG fund and in the top 10 in our ARKK fund, has developed a therapy to cure sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia. Both of those are blood-related diseases, with one treatment. Think about that. Now the preconditioning for that is gruesome. It involves almost like chemotherapy, which is going to change, but nonetheless, there's huge demand for it because these people go to the emergency room 10 to 20 times per year for blood transfusions to save their lives. Of course they're going to go through a tough regimen; they want to live a more normal life. So it's already generating revenue. Both of those are already generating revenue for CRISPR Therapeutics and a company called Vertex.
So there's three or four different companies you've mentioned here: Tesla, Archer, CRISPR. If I start with Tesla, you were bullish on Tesla, you were making big predictions about Tesla before pretty much anyone else out there. I think in 2015? And at the time in 2015, you said that you believed the stock would get above 4,000 roughly?
Right, on the old stock. Before the stock split. And you were right by some significant margin. I think you predicted it would be 4,000 before the stock split, and I think at its peak that equates to about 18,000, maybe 12,000 at its peak. Yes, well, we were right about two years early, or Tesla got to where we believed it would go two years before most expected. In 2018 and '19, many people, as Elon was discussing and describing "production hell" for the Model 3, many people thought the company would go bankrupt. And yet we knew that if Elon Musk could create a reusable rocket that could land on a barge in the water, he would be able to figure out how to produce at scale the Model 3. That was to us a simple conclusion. Now, in hindsight, as we are learning from Tesla, production hell and they themselves were worried. That's why Elon slept on the floor in the production factory and just became maniacally involved, which is how he works. So yes. And now our prediction, the stock is $270–$280. Our prediction in five years is $2,600. And 90% of that valuation comes not from the electric vehicle, but from this robotaxi platform. Because the electric car, if you think about it, is a one-shot sale. Sell and hope they come back when they're replacing their car.
This essentially means that we'll be driving cars that we can click a button and then it becomes an autonomous taxi. So I go on holiday, I have my Tesla car at my house. When I go on holiday, the car turns into a taxi and starts chauffeuring people around. It makes me money. But also from the consumer's perspective that are trying to hail a taxi, at any point I can go on my Tesla app, I press a button, an autonomous car comes to me with no one driving it and it takes me to my destination with no driver at all.
Right. And then the recurring revenue model, I believe, is you subscribe. It probably could be you subscribe to the network or they could, you know, maybe it could be either/or, subscription or a la carte if you don't think you're going to use it that much. Now, when I'm here in the UK and Europe, many people do not believe what you just said. And they don't because your regulators have not allowed FSD (Full Self-Driving) here. Somewhere in Europe, I think they're beginning to consider it. Maybe even in the UK here they are considering it. In St. Petersburg, Florida, where we're based, I can go from my house to anywhere and flawlessly the car will take me there. Now we still have to sit in the driver's seat for now, but in June or soon thereafter, when they turn the system on, if regulators permit—right now we're state by state—I think that's going to change so that we'll have federal regulation so that this can happen a lot faster. One other thing about Tesla, though, in that $2,600 number, we do not include much for humanoid robots. And this is happening faster than we thought. And the reason it's happening faster is humanoid robots, they are the convergence of the same three technologies or innovation platforms as robotaxis: robotics, energy storage (battery operated), and AI. So Tesla's way ahead of the game on humanoid robots. And yet we have very little. Now, Elon thinks that the humanoid robot business is going to dwarf the robotaxi business. And we think he's right, but longer term. So as I mentioned, we expect all-in around the world, including China, not just Tesla, but the entire ecosystem, an $8 to $10 trillion market in the next 5 to 10 years. For humanoid robots, we expect a $26 trillion revenue market. Now, that's going to be a little further along. Robotaxis will happen faster, but it may not be as distant as we were once thinking.
For anyone that doesn't know, humanoid robots are basically robots that we'll have in our home and at work. These are—there was a video that I think Elon retweeted the other day showing one of the humanoid robots dancing. Was that real? I was looking at that video thinking surely that's not real. But he confirmed, I believe, that it was real.
Yes. Now when we went to the Cybercab event, there were some humanoid robots dancing there, but they were tethered and they were remotely controlled. Now Cybercab I think was about a year ago. Yes, maybe. So since then, they've been able to untether them, and I do believe that that dancing robot was not tethered and not remotely controlled.
It was quite shocking to see a robot doing that because if a robot can have that dexterity and mobility, and then you overlay that with the AI technologies that are accelerating rapidly, it begs the question. And the question is quite clear, which is: what about humans?
Yes. And just to put a finer note on this, Elon will not be satisfied until these robots can thread a needle. So that's where we're going.
What does that mean for humans?
So you know, the history of technology is that it has been a net job creator throughout history. But humanoid robots are getting awfully close to what we do, right? So it's a good question. I think creativity is a big part of that, ingenuity and creativity. And you know, I think there's going to be a lot of new inventions in the future, so let's see what those are. But even today, there's something called vibe coding. Have you heard of it? Okay. Because we've moved into the world of natural language programming.
What is vibe coding for someone that doesn’t know?
Vibe coding means you know a natural language. We all know a natural language—ours is English for the most part, but it could be any language. We're going to be able to go to ChatGPT or to especially now they just launched I think last week something called Codex, Replit, and Anthropic's fantastic for programming. And we'll say, "This is what I'm attempting to do" in English language. And I've seen demos of this just internally. We are going to replace some of our software that we're buying from outsiders and customize it for us because we don't have to buy off-the-shelf anymore, one size fits all. I think there's going to be a lot more customization and personalization and creativity explosion here. You know, it's interesting that this is happening when the demographic profile of the developed world is as it is. We have a very low unemployment rate in the US. I know the unemployment rates in Europe and the UK have been dropping to much lower levels than where they were stuck for years. I remember thinking, "Wow, double digits." We have a demographic issue. I mean, if you watch what Elon Musk worries about the most, he worries about the population implosion. Collapse. Collapse in population in the developed world because we're not producing children above the fertility rate. We are setting up for a shrinkage with China is going there, Japan is going there. And so we're going to need productivity to help us if we can't find human beings.
Ah okay, so you're saying that the robotics and AI could actually fill the gap that we lose in terms of productivity because our society's going to be like an inverted pyramid; it's going to be more elderly people and less young people.
Yes, absolutely. Productivity is going to be essential. So as we're looking at real growth ahead, and when you think about real growth, you should be thinking, "Okay, somebody's benefiting from this." And I'm going to set up the number here by describing what has happened historically. If you look from 1500 to 1900 and you try and figure out what real GDP growth was back then, real economic growth. As best as Brett Winton, our chief futurist, in consultation with academics can determine, it was roughly 0.6% per year. And then we had the Industrial Revolution. We had the internal combustion engine, telephone, electricity. And for the past 125 years, real GDP growth has been 3%. And most living standards have gone up over time. Some more than others—I know that's a debate—but most have gone up. If we, as we look forward based on the five innovation platforms around which we have centered our research and investing, if we're right, real GDP growth in the next five years could accelerate to 7.3%.
And that gives you a sense of the economic activity, wealth generation out there. And when we are presenting to investors, we are actually presenting to them not only because they're investors, but because they have children or grandchildren who need to adapt to this new world. And our mantra in giving away our research—which we do—is "Get on the right side of change." We also do podcasts. We try, we do a lot of outreach because we think this is a very important moment in time. Seize the moment, grab hold of these new technologies because that growth rate is more than twice where we've been. And if you are on the right side of change, we think the opportunities are going to be enormous: investment opportunities and job opportunities.
Yeah, I feel like I feel like I can't figure out what how the displacement rate meets the creation rate. So the destruction rate of current jobs will meet the creation rate of new jobs. Because many of these new jobs—I guess there's some of them we can't predict yet, I understand that—but even the ones that we can't predict yet would need to be inherently human, i.e., need the skills of a human for them to be occupied by humans. So what category of stuff is that? My girlfriend's a breathwork practitioner. She's upstairs now with 10 women and she's teaching them breathwork.
Okay, so she's fine. Yeah, like because they're doing that in person, whatever, she's fine. Well, and maybe she's not if people decide to do it on ChatGPT. But if they want to be with a group of women and, you know, learn from an expert whom they respect—there's as much the social experience. That's going to become more important. Relationships are going to become more important. Many people in our business, I think, are going to be out of jobs because the business has become really—nothing, I shouldn't be this disrespectful. No, it’s not quite right at all. But so many are just hugging benchmarks, whether it's S&P 500 or MSCI World or the Nasdaq. A machine can do that. A machine can do that easily. And that is what passive investing is: machines doing it. I think in order to earn a place in the new world, you've got to add a lot of value. More value than a machine can. So in our case, we're saying, okay, well, our stocks are not in those benchmarks. And therefore, we are doing original research trying to figure out who they are and where they are, these companies that are going to transform the world.
Why can't AI replace what you're doing in terms of...?
So, and we think about that all the time. So AI can use pattern recognition. It’s all based on history, right? It can use pattern recognition maybe to do what we're doing. What are the three characteristics that define an innovation platform for us? The most important one is they follow something called Wright's Law, which measures the learning curve, how fast the costs are going to decline with this new technology. Technology is deflationary. Costs fall over time and they're passed through into lower prices or better performance, one or the other. That is the most important. A machine can figure that out, I'm sure. But asking the questions are going to be important, like there wasn't before 2014 when we started Ark much on autonomous mobility, or eVTOLs, or for that matter, AI. AI had become science fiction; there weren't any breakthroughs in recent years. But then we got some breakthroughs. So could, so Wright's Law is the first: figure out that cost curve decline and see how quickly the technology can proliferate across sectors. That's the other criterion here. The technologies that we are following are going to cut across economic sectors and apply to more than one group of people. And then the third is that these technologies serve as launching pads for new technologies. So in the case of DNA sequencing, which was the base technology, we needed that before CRISPR gene editing could be created. We needed to be able to understand what was mutating in the genome, where the programming errors were, so that gene editing could come in and edit out those programming errors.
And do you think in 5-10 years from now that unemployment is going to be higher or lower?
In 5 or 10 years—let's assume we don't have a policy mistake and a recession, so just steady state—I think it will be the same or lower. And most of this is because those baby boomers are retiring. They come out of the labor force, and the generations following them are smaller. Even now what's happening is we're passing through the baby boom echo, meaning the children of the baby boom. That cohort was I don't think it was any bigger than the baby boom population.
Do you think there's because of the speed and the acceleration of AI, the length of careers has radically reduced? Because you would go to school, then you go to university, you qualify as, I don't know, an accountant, and that's like a 10-15 year process. You get a job as an accountant, you start working your way up. But now with AI coming in, some of these jobs are being completely annihilated extremely quickly.
At the same time, vibe coding is booming. So I think what's going to happen—and this will be very healthy for productivity—we're going to have a lot more experimentation and people taking risks on themselves. And maybe this idea of a corporation as we know it is going to change radically. You know, crypto is enabling distributed autonomous organizations. Just like Bitcoin, there's no one governing it, right? It's a distributed network. And you know, let's see how these do and how vibe coding and AI integrate into the crypto—and I'm going to stop calling it crypto because it really should be called digital assets world, which legitimizes it more. Crypto sounds nefarious. Digital assets is where young people—and I'll say young people are spending more than half of their discretionary, their free time online. And so property ownership online is becoming more important. It's being legitimized by the way people are spending their time.
On this point of robotics and AI, your biggest position I believe is Tesla, isn't it, in your fund?
Yes.
But obviously Elon decided that he wanted to go into politics. He wanted to do the Department of Government Efficiency called DOGE, teaming up with Trump to try and eliminate government waste. Now as an investor, you must not love that.
Well, I have two points of view.
Because it did impact the performance of the company. Do you know, I drive a Tesla when I go to America, and it was the first time ever, on the last trip to America in January—I live in LA now—where I'm driving my Cybertruck, it's got the full self-driving, it's incredible. But for the first time ever, I thought, "I could be attacked. So I probably shouldn't get a Cybertruck. I should probably get something else," because I had heard of all these reports of people being attacked. And so it was quite interesting to hear in the earnings report, which I listened to, that there's been this decline in revenue, in profitability, in vehicle sales growth, etc., in Q1 of this year, which I think even Elon in that earnings call highlights is a consequence of him becoming political.
Yes. I think that surprised him. So I have many thoughts about this. Our government has become so bloated, it is scary. And our indebtedness is growing. And if we want to remain the reserve currency of the world, we're at risk of losing it. And on our tail is the whole digital asset world, right? So government spending is taxation. It's either taxation that's going to happen immediately, or will happen in the future, or will happen through inflation, which is the most regressive tax at all. So I think his sentiment was right in terms of getting in there and seeing what technology can do for the government, which is really what's happening. I'm watching it in the FDA, how they're starting to use AI. It's phenomenal what's happening. So I'm very happy that half of the solution is understanding the problem, that someone is in there with that focus and determination. He of course has said he's stepping away this month, as a matter of fact, to spend more time with his companies.
Which you must be happy about.
Well, of course I'm happy about it, but I have—with the exception of this political dynamic—I don't think that Elon not being there on a day-to-day basis is what has caused the problem in the first quarter. It was much more macro. We had a negative quarter in real GDP growth in the first quarter. So macro, which is hitting everyone, and the overlay of this political dynamic. The news cycle, thank goodness, moves fast and so we'll be through that, I think. And by the way, there are news reports even this weekend saying those who were feeling about him, you know, as it relates to DOGE and one party, are having a change of heart because tax rates are going to come down because we're being more disciplined on the government spending side.
Elon's way of managing his companies is to attract the best and the brightest, not only scientists, engineers, but also business people. These are people who want to solve the hardest problems in the world. He sets a timeline that seems reasonable to him for milestones to occur. And he doesn't interfere unless they start missing those milestones or the timing of those milestones. Then he gets involved. And that's where you hear he'll go in and he'll just fire people wholesale and get the program going again. And he's done that certainly at Tesla. He's done that at all of his companies. And so he's really troubleshooter in chief. Once he understands and has set a strategy, he then becomes troubleshooter in chief.
Have you met him?
Oh yes, we did actually. Our first podcast with him was in 2019 during production hell. We were so happy. So as you know, we have a social strategy, so we push our research out through social media as we give it away or as we're evolving it. And he liked a piece of research that Tasha Keeney had put out on autonomous back then. And I was on a phone call, I couldn't get off, but I heard this whooping and screaming through the office and I thought it sounded good, it wasn't an emergency, so I didn't have to leave that call. But I got out, I said, "What happened?" "Elon!" and I said, "Okay, ask him if we can do a podcast." And we were there the next week.
What do you think of him as an entrepreneur?
I think he's the Thomas Edison of our age in terms of his innovative ingenuity. And I also think having met him a number of times, I think he's a very good person. He wants to do the right thing. If I had to say one thing, he wants to do the right thing to transform the lot of most of humanity. And he started with Tesla—SpaceX and Tesla. Tesla was an environmental move, which I think a lot of people attacking his cars, who are probably very supportive of the environmental movement, they've forgotten. Sending a rocket to Mars with humanoid robots and ultimately people, he thinks will transform life on Earth as well because as we've learned from space history, what we learn about material science and technologies that help us break through into these very difficult problems to solve is going to help us here on Earth as well. So I think he's a very good person and wants to do the right thing. That’s if I had to describe him, that’s what I’d say, other than genius of our time.
I often wonder, you know, because he's had such a profound impact on the world in many, many ways through the companies he started. I think the biggest risk really is just his own health. Doesn't seem to sleep much.
You know, though, he says that he does sleep. I think he recommends, I think if I'm right on this, getting seven hours sleep a night. And yes, but when he is focused, you know it. I mean, people even look, there were many pictures of him whether it was standing with other policymakers and then he zones into something, you know he’s zoned in and thinking about only that and a problem that he wants to solve.
You've invested what, just over $2 billion in Tesla?
Let's see, so it would be roughly, yes, in that region.
Bitcoin. You invested in Bitcoin very, very early. What was the first price that you bought Bitcoin for? In I think it was 2015?
Yes, it was in the summer of 2015. We got in at roughly $250. Today it's $104,000, I think roughly. So we did get in very early. And we knew we were onto something really when people were making fun of us saying, "Okay, that's a marketing trick. You're new to our business and to the new fund world and you're trying to attract attention." And we were thinking, "Wow, they have no idea how much research we've done on this." And Art Laffer, my professor again from USC, we had him read our first white paper on Bitcoin. Bitcoin: could it serve the three roles of money? So means of exchange (what we use every day to buy things), store of value (like gold), and unit of account (would prices be quoted in terms of Bitcoin). Chris Burniske was our first analyst on Bitcoin, wrote the paper, Art read it and added to it enormously in terms of economic theory, which was great for us. And then he said to us, he said, "This is what I've been waiting for since the US closed the gold window in 1971. A rules-based global monetary system like Bretton Woods under the gold exchange standard." And I said, "Art, that's a very big idea. How big is it?" And he said, "Well, how big is the monetary base of the US?" Back then it was four and a half trillion, and Bitcoin's market cap or network value was six billion. And I said, "Okay, that's a very big idea." And we were trying to get it into our portfolios. Regulators were hesitant, but I bought it right then for myself and haven't sold it and I'm very happy with it.
You bought it for yourself personally? At what price?
$250. So we couldn't buy it back then, but we finally got through the regulatory process and we were able to put—the New York Stock Exchange said, "Okay, you can put a 1% position in the portfolio." And it was of a grantor trust called GBTC. So we did, and we just never sold it. They didn't tell us we had to keep it at 1%, so...
Oh, it’s risen to be more?
Oh yes, it ballooned.
And what is it about Bitcoin that you believe was and is still a good investment opportunity for the average person?
So at this price, it's about a $2 trillion market cap. And so halfway to that original four and a half trillion, but our price target actually has expanded since then. Because it's not just a global monetary system. It is a new asset class. And that's a very big idea as well. What makes a new asset class? And we haven't had one truly since equities in the 1600s.
When you say a new asset class, you mean a completely new category of funding companies?
Yes, right.
So an asset class would be something like technology is an asset class, right?
No, it would be like stocks, bonds, commodities, real estate. This is a new asset class. And most people will agree with that—we did a study on it—if this asset does not perform like other assets. In other words, it provides diversification for funds. And because it is behaving differently, institutions have to consider it because they're competing against each other. And if one puts it in, they all know they're competing against each other, so others have to consider it. And we believe that part of the opportunity has not been tapped. And just to put some numbers on this: right now, we're approaching 20 million Bitcoin outstanding.
Which means...?
The number of Bitcoin that have been minted over time by Bitcoin miners.
So there's 21 million in total, right?
There will be at the end of the minting process 21 million. So we have only 1 million to go. 1 million would be $100 billion worth, a little more than that right now.
So just for someone that might not know much about Bitcoin, Bitcoin is mined using computers and so far they've mined 20 million of them and there's 1 million of them left to mine.
So institutions really just started considering Bitcoin because the SEC gave the green light to Bitcoin with the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF in January of last year. And it takes a while for institutions to do their research and commit. And so they're just now committing. And there's only $100 billion of new market cap that is going to be created, whereas they have trillions of dollars under management. And so we think there will be a lot of incremental demand and to satisfy a lot of that demand, someone's going to have to sell.
Which means the price goes up.
Which yeah, if people don't want to sell because Bitcoin's been awfully good. And our forecast right now—Bitcoin's around $100–$105,000. Our forecast for 2030 is $1.5 million. And we do that—the building blocks for that, the three biggest building blocks are institutional (which has barely started), store of value or digital gold (young people are much more comfortable with digital gold than gold).
So on the institutional side, that means institutions, investment institutions start investing in it. Young people start investing in it as a way to save and store their money.
Yes. And then the very important use case that many people do not discuss is how important Bitcoin and stablecoins (which are backed by US Treasuries) are going to become to the emerging markets. In emerging markets, many of them are at the whim of policymakers who show no discipline in fiscal or monetary policy. And so they're used to going through booms and busts and booms and bailed out by the IMF. And they need an insurance policy.
So if you're in Venezuela, you need a currency that's going to be stable.
Exactly. Well, this Bitcoin is—so stablecoins are stable vis-a-vis the dollar. Bitcoin is more of an investment because it does appreciate over time. Now you go through—it's volatile, no question, and that's the first thing people have to know about it. But it is becoming less volatile as more and more investors hold it.
So you think Bitcoin will potentially multiply in value by 15 times in the next five years? Wow, that'd be pretty crazy.
It's a very big idea because it is a new asset class. It does represent a global monetary system unlike any other digital asset out there. It is backed by the largest computer network in the world. The layer one, which is the base layer, has not been hacked. Think about that since 2009 when it was released—not been hacked. How many systems can say that? And it is a technology; it is native to the internet. And again, digital assets—or any Bitcoin, Ether, Solana—all of them exist because they're vying to be the native currencies to the internet and to enable smart contracts and really transform the financial services industry.
Why did you invest in Coinbase?
Coinbase is an exchange for digital assets and increasingly derivatives. It has gone global. It just bought Deribit, which is the largest options exchange out there. And it owns a futures—so it's really going after the derivatives market where there's a huge amount of activity, which is fantastic because it's all legitimizing digital assets. And it is the most regulatory compliant exchange in the world. Binance is another major exchange but has had more run-ins with regulators around the world and really hasn't been allowed into the United States. It also wants to become part of the new payments infrastructure and so is evolving strategies that way as well. We've gotten to know management very well. They fought the fight against regulators in a magnificent way and they have educated policymakers importantly who understand that this innovation—we almost lost this innovation to the rest of the world because of our regulatory stance. They've helped policymakers understand that this infrastructure is what developers did not build into the internet in the early '90s because they didn't know finance or commerce would take place. That’s all this is. It's that simple, right?
So if I'm trying to invest in, just to summarize then, if I'm trying to invest in AI, your key positions there and your key thoughts are companies like Tesla. I heard you invest in Twilio?
We had invested in Twilio. They had a management turnover, so we moved away from that. But Palantir.
Palantir.
Palantir is a platform-as-a-service company which we think is not only going to help governments move into the digital age—like our Defense Department and now it's moving into other departments—but also these huge, huge enterprises because it's not forcing them to rip and replace anything. They'll build on top of whatever technology infrastructure is there and over time just usurp the role of the legacy technologies. So very important company we think in the digital age. It's had a very big run. We have taken profits and while it was having a big run, Nvidia was selling off; it was down more than 50%, so we put some of our Palantir proceeds back into Nvidia.
Is there anything else in the AI bucket when you're thinking about stocks?
Well, when you're thinking about chip companies in particular, TSMC is the platform for chip manufacturing. It doesn't matter who wins. We do think there are going to be many more competitors to Nvidia. Nvidia still number one.
Have you heard about Groq?
Oh yes, Groq we are invested in in our private fund.
Oh okay, so I'm just for people that might be confused.
Groq with a Q. Yes, that's in our private fund. We do own Groq. And that's a very important company on the inference side of the equation.
I've invested in Groq as well.
Well, I think you're going to do very well. So TSMC, though, is where all the chip manufacturers go for production. It is the most sophisticated manufacturer of chips in the world. There is geopolitical risk there. Most of its business is in Taiwan. It is diversifying into certainly into the US and I think even into Europe. So I think that will continue to be a very important company as well.
So what are your what’s your top 10 in terms of public stocks that anybody could invest in? If you had to give me your top 10.
So I'd have to give you a—and they're listed on our website and I won't go in order, I'm sure—but of course Tesla, Coinbase, Robinhood, Roku (a highly misunderstood stock for connected TVs), CRISPR Therapeutics (gene editing), Palantir (AI software), Archer (the eVTOL company, which also signed an exclusive deal with Anduril, which is the most sophisticated defense tech play), Shopify (shopping platform using AI), and...
Roblox?
Roblox. That's the one we're missing. Roblox is a user-generated gaming company. The fascinating thing—and it's also a social platform—it started for children younger than 13 years old. And what's interesting about it is they've stayed with it because 60% of its user base now is above 13. It's the largest user-generated content provider out there. And what is fascinating about it is, I know one of my friend's daughters has started her own dress shop on Roblox. And what she doesn't understand is that she's learning about business but she's also learning how to code, especially in this new vibe coding world. So I think it's going to be a very important company going forward. The interesting thing about gaming and technology transitions is that it is the only entertainment medium that has not fallen apart with technology transitions. It has actually grown because those who love their games from 25 years ago still play them. It's grown with each technology revolution. And user-generated content in gaming is the next big thing.
A business is only as good as the people inside it. So how do you make sure you’re hiring the best? Our sponsor LinkedIn can help you find these applicants quickly. I believe in taking time to hire slowly, but I also understand that once you’ve decided to hire, you want to get the ball rolling and get the best candidates in front of you to start interviewing. And that’s where paying to promote your role on LinkedIn makes all the difference because you’ll get applicants seven times faster than if you post your job for free. And even though slower, more considered hiring is important, you never want your hiring platforms to be what’s holding you back. LinkedIn keeps pace. It takes care of the heavy lifting, sending you highly skilled candidates that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. So when the time comes to make your next hire, make it count and promote your job on LinkedIn. Head to linkedin.com/doac. That’s linkedin.com/doac. Terms and conditions apply.
Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself. I'm inviting 10,000 of you to come even deeper into the Diary of a CEO. Welcome to my Inner Circle. This is a brand new private community that I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown. We have the briefs that are on my pad when I'm recording the conversation. We have clips we've never released. We have behind-the-scenes conversations with the guests, and also the episodes that we've never, ever released. And so much more. In the Inner Circle, you'll have direct access to me. You can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview, and the types of conversations you would love us to have. But remember for now, we're only inviting the first 10,000 people that join before it closes. So if you want to join our private close community, head to the link in the description below or go to doacircle.com. I will speak to you then.
If you had a thousand dollars to invest and you had to invest it somewhere, where would you be investing it? And how would you be—like the general philosophy towards wealth creation at such a stage? If you had a thousand dollars, how would you be thinking about creating wealth for yourself?
A couple of things. Averaging into either an ETF—exchange-traded fund, so it treats a group of stocks like one stock. So ARKK is nearly 35–36 stocks, but you can buy them by purchasing ARKK. And you can do that on your mobile phone by downloading a bunch of different apps that allow you to just buy that one ETF, which means you own 35 stocks. Yes. And your team are basically choosing what those 35 stocks are based on your research. Right. And ARKK are our highest conviction stocks, and they offer an exposure to all of the innovation platforms that we've talked about. Whereas ARKI here in Europe is focused primarily on artificial intelligence and robotics because we think that convergence is going to be pretty explosive. What you don't get there and you do get in ARKK, we also have in another very focused fund, ARKG, which is really healthcare applications of AI and other healthcare names that we think are going to be pretty transformative in the new world as regulators really understand how important AI is going to become to discovery, research trials, development, to diagnostic tests, and to curing disease.
Another question popped up, which is about Ethereum and these other cryptocurrencies. Do you invest in any of these others?
Yes, we have—well, in our public funds, we've put them—I don't think we can own them here in the UK yet, but in the US, we have them in some of our funds. Both of them. They are key to the financial services revolution. So to get people to understand and feel comfortable with that, we don't call it the crypto revolution; it's the digital assets revolution, and it's simply the "finternet"—the financial internet. So we do, we do.
And do you believe are you more bullish on the price potential of Bitcoin than Ethereum?
Yes, we think Bitcoin is the biggest idea. It serves three revolutions: global monetary system (Ethereum and Solana do not), new asset class (they are part of a new asset class, but Bitcoin's going to be the biggest), and new technology (it's the most secure blockchain technology out there).
What about all these others, Solana and all these others?
So Ether and Solana, the big three are those. And we think they'll all be successful, all three of them. Bitcoin the most. We're very interested in stablecoins, but that's just like cash. And you know, there are millions of crypto assets out there; we think most of them die.
Is there any way to invest in stablecoins? How do you invest in stablecoins?
So indirectly, right now, it is through Coinbase. They have a deal with Circle. Any revenue that Circle generates—its stablecoin is USDC—any revenue they split 50/50 in the US. Circle itself has announced that it is going public, and so we're looking forward to that.
And what’s the sort of psychology or mentality one has to adopt to be a good investor?
Depends what you've bought. If you buy a strategy like ours, which would be in the aggressive growth strategy, put it in, you know, averaging in over time, just like with Bitcoin as I mentioned earlier, averaging in over time.
What does averaging in mean?
Averaging in means, you know, buy a little every month, maybe every payday. I think one of my daughters was buying Bitcoin every week, but not a Bitcoin—she couldn't do that—a Satoshi, you know. So and close your eyes. This is a long-term investment. If we're right, according to our analysis—now this is our research, our analysis, no promises, we can't do that, but according to our research, the technologies around which we have centered our research and focused our investments, they we believe will go up more than tenfold in the next 5 to 10 years. And that's how much explosive growth we have ahead of us as these technologies converge and create incredible opportunities for investors. And you know, I'm hearing a lot of investors, a lot of people as they get into investing, of course they have their day jobs. But once they have accrued enough, you know, they're making choices about dialing down their day jobs and spending more time investing. You asked what are some of the jobs of the future going to be? I think individual investors are going to be providing for themselves if they are investing on the right side of change.
So if you're right, that means that by investing your fund I would make a 1,000% return roughly.
Yes, no promises. But this is all based on research and you can find it in our "Big Ideas." Big Ideas 2025 is on our website, ark-invest.com. And you can find a lot more information about our funds on ark-funds.com.
And I should probably say this is not investing advice.
It is not. Do your own research. You can lose all of your money. Yes, you can lose all of it if you decide to do any of these things. But that's why we put ark-invest separate from the funds site because that's just research. Learn. Learn what you're investing in or learn why we've invested the way we have. You know, that's what we do all day long is we try and help—well, first of all, we're doing the research, we are making the investments—but I think one of the most important things we do is communicate what we're doing and why we're doing it.
What do you think of Trump, tariffs, everything that's going on in America at the moment? For the average person, should they be concerned? Are you bullish? Do you think Trump's got it right?
If you look at what happened to the equity market—the stock market—when Trump was elected, it went crazy to the upside, as did our strategy. And why? The promise was deregulation, and that I think is underestimated how important it is because we're strangling in regulation. This is not our DNA; we've got to get out from under this. Lower taxes, lower interest rates is what he wants, of course, and lower tariffs. What he didn't tell us was exactly how he was going to go about that process. And it has felt chaotic. And I've had to go out and explain what's going on—try to explain what's going on. And I have to tell you, it scared me silly to see what was going on because I knew that businesses were paralyzed and that we could have a mess on our hands.
And I certainly communicated through my channels. Art communicated through his channels—in fact, I think in one publication he said, "I have never been more scared in my career." And we were trying to really get into Trump's head. And I know President Trump listens to Art, but he also listens to a lot of other people, one of whom was Peter Navarro, who seemed to have a hold on Trump when it came to tariffs. And yet, when I saw Treasury Secretary Bessent really push aside Navarro—and that could only happen with Trump—I knew we were going to be okay. I knew we were going to be okay because throughout all of this chaos, I think what he is trying to do is not only get tariffs on the US down throughout the world, but maybe more importantly, get non-tariff trade barriers down. For example, I didn't even know the UK would not accept our beef or ethanol. Well, now you're accepting our beef and ethanol. I don't know if people in the supermarkets will buy it, but anyway, this was... but other countries, many, many more non-tariff trade barriers. And so he is just trying to bust that up, make it more visible.
For example, Canada. I think they charged a 250% tariff on our milk. And one of President Trump's promises was to take care of the farmers. Okay, that's why you see the rhetoric around Canada. Now, do I agree with his style? I would never do it that way. I would never do it that way. And it was unfathomable for me because he is sensitive to business and he must have known that everything was going to stop. But he also knows that he has to sound crazy for other people to take him seriously. And people have to believe he will do crazy things in order for people to take him seriously. And he does do crazy things.
So do you think it's going to work out?
I do. And I think the stock market is beginning to smell it.
If I just had to invest in one stock right now, what stock would you recommend I invest in?
Okay, well, I have to give you our top pick. It would be Tesla.
Okay, interesting. Because think about it: it is a convergence among three of our major platforms: robots, energy storage, AI. And it's not stopping with robotaxis; there's a story beyond that with humanoid robots. And our $2,600 number has nothing for humanoid robots. We just thought it'd be an investment period and... but I think he's going to start generating not only productivity gains internally but revenues from humanoid robots.
What are you concerned about in terms of the way that the world is going and everything that's happening? What are the things that keep you up at night? I've got many a concern, so I’ve got many unanswered questions and worries about how things might play out, but keen to hear yours.
I am such an optimist, I really do have to dig down deep. If you had asked me this a few weeks ago, I would have said the tariff situation is going to blow the global economy up if we're not careful. So I'm much more settled about that right now. I'd have to say I am concerned that there are going to be people caught out by these new technologies and, for whatever reason, not willing to adapt. Because there are going to be huge opportunities if they do. And so one of the reasons we give away our research—I'm very honored to do a podcast like this—is to get that word out. There is so much information available. You can just go to our site and listen to our podcasts, and if anything inspires you, go for it because the opportunities are going to be enormous.
When you say you're concerned people might get caught out...
Caught out in disrupted industries. I mean, we think the whole transportation industry is going to be disrupted. We think retail as we know it's going to be disrupted as we all...
Retail as in like shops and stuff?
Yes, although if they adapt with more social, personal experiences. I think anything physical you'll want to have a social dynamic associated with it. But in terms of what I think is going to happen to retail is we're going to have our personal shopping assistants and they're going to anticipate what we want—which I can’t wait, I hate shopping—anticipate what we want or basically flag something that they know we would like if we knew it were available. And they'll be disintermediating all of the traditional sources because they can go anywhere in the world. So just think about almost every sector is going to be disrupted. Healthcare's going to be disrupted enormously, I think. For the better. But those who are wedded to doing things the old way are probably going to be disrupted.
Yeah, that is my concern as well. And just how we handle that as a society.
But I think if we can help people understand that they have a lot of control over this if they're willing to learn and dream and use their imaginations. But they have to do it for their children at least, right? If we took the general population in a London and said 100 people, how many of you understand what AI is or how many of you used ChatGPT? We’d have a certain percentage, maybe I don't know, 50% or more. If I went to the countryside and I stopped a lovely person shopping at in the local village and said, "Do you use ChatGPT?" it'd probably be significantly lower percentage. They wouldn't care about that—what is that, whatever. I wonder about the inequality of education, but just initiative and how those that really do have a proclivity to lean in and to experiment and to mess around and to learn because maybe there's an incentive because they work in a city and their employer's asking them to, will be off to the races with this disruptive technology. And there's just like a lot of the rest of society, of Middle America and the countrysides and those types of people who are just not even going to see it coming.
But that's why we're out there. And the important word that you used was initiative. Because I really think when people hear the word inequality, they like to blame something, right? There will be no reason for this—I'm sure someone's going to come back at me for saying that—but of course there are people whom we have to help along the way, no question about it. But for those who are healthy and are listening to this podcast and are saying, "I don't know exactly what she's talking about but I'm going to start reading up on some of these new ways of doing things and make sure to at least understand it," I think with that kind of initiative they'll find it. They just will find it. There's going to be so much opportunity. It's going to be so exciting! And I think again, creativity and especially young people using their imaginations, you know, they're not held back by any preconceived notions.
I ask all the questions I ask because I'm trying to like solve little question marks I have in my head about the future. And it's really difficult at this time to see round the corner because so much is changing so quickly and there's all of these converging technologies as you describe, like robotics and AI. And then when I put robotics and AI together I go, "Fuck," because do you know what I mean? Because like there's—oh my god, I keep coming back to this question of like "What am I going to do?" and not in "I'm just going to sit..."
You know what’s good about that? You know what’s really good about that? That will motivate you.
It does.
Of course it does. It's great! It's great.
It motivates me to ask people like you the question 17 times in a row to try and find the answer. But it's a real point because I run businesses. We have at our headquarters which is round the corner, it's about 25,000 square foot office, we have hundreds of people in that building and I'm thinking about the roles that we're hiring for and I'm now looking at them through the lens of agentic AI, so AI agents, and then if I overlay that with robotics and AI... you know, what roles would we need to hire in the future because theoretically, like can you name a single role in a media company that would when I'm talking about in the robotics era that would really need to be done by a human, I guess other than one could say human-to-human sales would still have some kind of element of human touch to them?
You know, though, I mean we've learned a lot from the ancient game of Go. You've heard about AlphaGo, which was Alphabet Google basically devising a program to compete against the Go champions. Go is much more complicated than chess. So I think the champion of the world at the time was a South Korean and he was sure he was going to beat this machine. Well, the machine beat him and he was crestfallen. And then he got his "chutzpah"—to use a New York word—back and he said, "Wait a minute. I'm going to start playing against machines." And so now he's playing against machines. His game is so much better that when he competes against humans—and those competitions are the more important ones, right?—when he competes against other human beings, the machine has kept him at his champion level. And of course everyone's using the machine. So we're all going to... artificial intelligence...
But he still can't beat a machine? He still can't beat the best machine in the world?
No, he can't. But I mean he can occasionally. But people don't want to go see machines competing against machines.
I get that in because human... humans like human error and they like to be able to relate and to aspire. But as it relates to the world of work, the incentive is productivity. And my humanoid robot isn't going to get sick and it's going to have a PhD in everything, so I don't want to see a human failing at their desk... humanoid robot. But then your robot and your AI is really focused on the past, right? That's what it's ingested.
They can make predictions, they're based on that past.
Pattern recognition. Which is how my brain works, right? Like a neural network. But that's why we chose the word "disruptive." Disruptive means the traditional world order and patterns therefore that the robots and others will recognize is going to change.
Sorry, what does that mean?
So when we're doing our research, we have a white sheet of paper. There's no history for this. And so we're doing a lot of original research. So AI machines might use our research as they... because we put it out there.
How does the AI think differently to a human though in terms of... I thought the human brain was building predictions essentially something based on lots of information and AI is basically doing the same thing with neural networks; it's making a prediction based on lots of new information. And therefore if we get to AGI it can create new information.
Yes, and and it will. But AGI... Elon will say it's two years away. And it does seem you know we're able to generate PhDs and rocket scientists now in the AI world, so he's probably right. But I also think about this as giving us super intelligence. So could ChatGPT do what we've done? Maybe I don't know, actually it's a very interesting exercise. I'm going to ask our team to do that before I put it out. To do to a model, a SpaceX model, financial model, income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement between now and 2050 when we have in the 2040s Elon expects if not sooner to colonize Mars. I'll see what kind of model it comes back with in terms of how...
In terms of how correct... in terms of how correct it is and what it uses to get there. Okay, I’ll do that now. SpaceX financial model or income statement. Okay, income statement. Let me ask the really smart model. Let's do 3.0. "Make a SpaceX"—you're an investor in SpaceX?
Yes, in the private fund, yes.
So am I. "Make a SpaceX income statement based on Elon's predictions from now until 2050." Okay, I'll put that on the screen so everybody can watch. And this is essentially going to look at everything he said about going to Mars and colonizing Mars and then tell you how valuable that company's going to be, essentially?
Yes. I'm not sure if you asked the question that way, did you say...?
I just said "Make a SpaceX income statement based on Elon's predictions from now until 2050" and then I can ask it what the market cap would be.
I wonder how long it's going to think. It’s going to think a long time, I have a feeling. And then it's going to take you through. I think, you know what was interesting, DeepSeek, the breakthrough it had on the reasoning side was it kept asking questions so it could get to the right answer faster. I think they're all adopting it now.
DeepSeek's open source.
Yeah, and they didn't need to spend much as much money on the training side because... that's what they say. They said $6 million trained on a high-end workstation and that that of course caused a trillion dollars worth of damage in the US market with Nvidia, one of the biggest casualties, because people said, "Well wait a minute. We're doing these data centers. You mean we don't need all those big data center servers to to do this work, we could do a high-end workstation for $6 million?" The answer is the pre-training for that model was done on a 50,000 GPU cluster that the hedge fund had. And the last step of the large language model was the $6 million step.
Okay, it's made its mind up now. So it says Starlink revenue in 2050 would be $250 billion. Launch and Starship revenue would be $120 billion. So the total revenue would be $370 billion. Cost of goods sold would be $172 billion. Gross profit therefore would be $200 billion. Operating expenses $37 billion. Operating income would be $161 billion after tax. So the net income would be $128 billion.
All right! And I have to to be honest, I haven't seen the last stage of this model. We haven't... that would be very interesting. I'd love to get a copy of that if you could send it to me.
100%, I’ll email it to you straight after.
You know, when I asked ChatGPT earlier, I said "Who is the number one woman in the world in investing?" it repeatedly said your name. So that's a pretty remarkable thing to have accomplished, especially in a male-dominated industry where there isn't many women that manage to rise to the top of that industry. So what is it about you in hindsight? You know, it's difficult to be objective about oneself, but what is it about you that meant that you were successful in a male-dominated industry, in an industry that's incredibly difficult to be successful in?
My advice to all young people getting into their first job especially, but even later jobs is: my mission when I started was to make my boss look brilliant. Now why do I say that? It's much more applicable today and possible today than it was back when there were no computers and no cell phones, which is when I started, right? But what did I do? My boss wanted to communicate—he was an economist—wanted to communicate in charts that, you know, he couldn't find. So I figured out a way, I went to our time-sharing system—that's all you could do back then, time-sharing is an ancient mainframe technology—and I figured out a way to make these charts and delight him. And I loved doing it, and I loved learning. I learned about technology, I learned and about economics through him. So that was the first thing.
Why is it important to make your boss look good?
Well, I think because if you do make him look good, first of all, you should he owe you a debt of gratitude if he turns around and gives you more growth opportunities. But if he or she doesn't, then you know it's time to go to the next place where you make that next boss look brilliant and maybe you have the growth trajectory. I had bosses who they loved the fact that I loved what I was doing, that I had such high conviction in what I was doing. And I'm going to give Art Laffer a lot of credit. When I walked into the financial world, I knew more about economics than most of the people in the room. And that was a great source of confidence, a great source of confidence.
And when I was leaving that firm, someone said—my boss at the time said—I was moving from LA to New York, my boss said, "You've only been doing this for three years, you're not ready to become their economist." And I just thought I was ready and more importantly, the company to which I was going thought I was ready. And as I was leaving, both he and others said, "Remember, you know more about economics than anyone else in the room you'll..." so take that with you. And I did. And I think that sense of confidence in understanding the way the world works from a macroeconomic point of view was critically important.
Now when I got to New York, I could not even speak Art Laffer's name because the Laffer Curve says if you cut tax rates that are too high, you will get more revenue. And what had happened is Ronald Reagan had cut tax rates. But Paul Volcker at the Fed was trying to starve the economy of inflation. So we were in back-to-back recessions and no, the government wasn't getting more revenue, so Art Laffer was, you know, on I couldn't say anything. But you know, that was fine. I knew he was going to be right and we were right. That was the story of the '80s and '90s. And that's why Jennison Associates and the Chief Investment Officer there, Sig Segalas, gave me an opportunity to get into equity research. I wanted to grow, I loved the stock market, and he loved my conviction. And so he started me on cyclical companies, which of course I would know a lot about. But Jennison was primarily a tech-oriented firm and of course, knowing that, I wanted to delight the boss, I wanted to get into the technologies and I made it my business to know as much about them and I was the only one willing to research stocks outside the US. Think about that now.
Art Laffer—Arthur Laffer?
Yes.
He wrote this letter describing you.
Oh he did? To you?
To me.
Oh!
He said: "There was this young lady named Cathie Duddy, now Cathie Wood, whose face was the map of Ireland and whose ambition was over the moon. I was a tough teacher and grader and Cathie's first steps were shaky, but in short order she rose to the occasion and aced the course. Impressed as I was, and believe me I was very impressed, I helped Cathie land her first job at Capital Group in LA and from that point in time it was game on. I followed her career closely after Capital Group, then onto Tupelo and her final job as an employee at AllianceBernstein. As you may imagine, she was the star investor at each stage. In 2014, Cathie took a giant entrepreneurial leap in the founding and funding of Ark Invest." And the letter goes on to say she's a mega success and God bless her, she never has forgotten her now-aged professor.
Well, that was very nice of him. So he has been so important to my career. Now I'm going to get a little weepy. But I gave him 1% of my company when I started it. And so he deserved it; he deserved it because he gave me a big, big break. He believed in me first.
Why does that make you emotional?
I don't know, we have we've gone through our life together and what's so interesting now is and fun is Bitcoin has rejuvenated Art. He's 85 years old or 84 and I'm seeing his excitement and he wants to spread the word around the world and now we're going into stablecoins together. And he just started an account on X. He has a flip phone. He doesn't do email and yet he has just started an account on X! And so we now have this technology relationship because he wasn't going to technology. But he knows, he's seen like Ark altogether, we have 3.3 million followers. And he's seen the reach that X has and he's also I think the other thing and I haven't answered your question it was just very nice of him to do that, you know, and I see it's a typed one page and very sweet.
§02Transcript — part 2
We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is: what is the craziest idea you ever had that turned out to be right?
Well, there are just a few one thing that it's not that crazy but it just gives you a sense of how not obvious in the early days of Ark. I remember saying "Well, you know autonomous vehicles are robots." And I was in a research meeting and everybody said "No they're not." And of course they are. You know, it's a crazy idea but and there was something I mean there are some things I'll say and the reason that's important from our point of view is this convergence idea: robotics, AI, energy storage. Wait a minute, this is a very big idea. So it seemed like no, I was like "I think it is." And so it was like we were, you know, feeling our way in the dark because it was 2014 and nobody was really talking about them.
And there's something like that very recently. Oh, we were talking about—it’s not a crazy idea, it’s just we're trying to solve problems—someone when as we were going on and on at our brainstorm on Friday about humanoid robots, someone he's our what do we call him? What do you call him? Curmudgeon? No, in a good way. In a good way. I don't even know what curmudgeon means. Curmudgeon means kind of contrarian or yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s not going to work, you know. Humanoid robots. He said, "I don't think that's going to be a thing." He said, "We really need robots that are going to be able to carry a lot more in terms of weight than those things will on those stilts." And in my mind kind of flashed: transformer robot. They'd have legs and all of that; you'd be able to fold them up so they look like a tank. And so that's what I said on... I know this doesn't sound so crazy to you, but everyone laughed at me. But I think that’s going to happen. I just imagining the future. Going to Disneyland when I'm 11 years old—we had just come over from Ireland—and seeing someone holding a phone on the Carousel of Progress and saying, "I'm going to have one of those." It sounded crazy at the time and I felt a little crazy but always dreamed.
So you think we’re going to have transformer robots?
Yeah. So the robot that cleans my house can transform and maybe become a bicycle! And everybody laughed at me, but I think that's going to happen. Another one was—and this was on—these are just little ideas in terms of how things hit my brain—but someone was talking about Boring, which is another one of Elon's companies, the underground transportation tunnels and stuff. Yeah, I forget what someone said in a post on X, but my answer was "Mars. Obviously." And people were laughing at that. And then as they were talking about it, they were saying, "Of course they're going to put that transportation system underground. We learned why you shouldn't have it on top of the ground from Earth." So just a little thing just caught me in a funny way; it's not the craziest. They’re just like, "Oh maybe that is the way things are going to work."
I wonder if if Elon dies before we get to Mars or if he just dies in the next 10 years from anything from any cause, how much of an impact that'll have on our rate of progress generally with space and electric vehicles and humanoid robots. Could be quite profound.
Well, he is getting us so far along that, you know, there's just going to be a runway he's created for years and years. Think about it: Mars 2040–50, you know.
Cathie, thank you. Thank you for doing what you do. That’s a sort of multifaceted point of gratitude because you do so much. You do so much in educating all of us in terms of innovation, investing, and what the future looks like, but also from your fund's perspective and your company's perspective, you do so much in open sourcing and putting the research and the work that you guys do out into the world when you don't necessarily have to. But as I've heard you say, it's a great benefit both to the world but also you do it because it also brings people to your fund, right? And it certainly did for me; that's how I came across you many, many years ago when I was reading some research with my brother around investing in the future and innovation and understanding your thesis around all of those things.
But also from the education side, you're distilling this complex research into simple language and information that the next generation can understand so that this moment of transition doesn't catch them off guard. And that's an incredible thing. But I have to say as well, you're such an inspiration for the very fact that you have achieved what you have achieved in your life. It's exceeding—it’s extremely rare for someone... and I don't always like to talk about gender or race or those kinds of things, but it's a point of... it’s a particular point, pertinent point in this case because you have succeeded in a very male-dominated industry. And I think just your presence, your existence alone is going to inspire lots of women and men, people like me, to pursue finance and investing as a career. So thank you so much for doing what you do and thank you for being who you are. It's incredibly important and you've demystified so many things for me over the years even though we've never met but watching your videos and reading the research that you guys put out. So I'm going to link all of that below and link to your websites and your funds and all those things so people can learn more. But yeah, thank you.
Thank you, Steven. Thank you for doing what you do and it's been an honor and a privilege. I know you have an incredible audience; you've built a fantastic business here and I have a feeling that this new world that you're fearing is going to be very good to you.
I hope so. Thank you.
The hardest conversations are often the ones we avoid. But what if you had the right question to start them with? Every single guest on the Diary of a CEO has left behind a question in this diary. And it's a question designed to challenge, to connect, and to go deeper with the next guest. And these are all the questions that I have here in my hand. On one side you've got the question that was asked, the name of the person who wrote it, and on the other side, if you scan that, you can watch the person who came after who answered it. 51 questions split across three different levels: the warmup level, the open-up level, and the deep level. So you decide how deep the conversation goes. And people play these conversation cards in boardrooms at work, in bedrooms alone at night, and on first dates—and everywhere in between. I'll put a link to the conversation cards in the description below and you can get yours at thediary.com.
Quick one. Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us, and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it’s a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can, now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you.
This year, most business owners have had one thing top of mind, which is how to make AI work for them. Because its potential is limitless. But if you don't know what you're doing, then you're guessing, which can be incredibly risky. Our sponsor NetSuite by Oracle helps businesses to get AI embedded throughout their organization, whether they're earning millions or hundreds of millions. NetSuite is the number one AI cloud financial system. And through their platform, you get all of your accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR in one place. Their AI connector also lets you pick the AI of your choice. Connect it with your business's data, then you can ask it questions. Like "how much cash on hand have we got in the company?" or "who are our key customers?" And because all of that data is connected, it makes your AI smarter, so it can automate routine tasks, deliver specific actionable insights, and help you cut the costs. Already over 43,000 businesses have chosen to future-proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn more on how you can help your business, just get their business guide, which is called "Demystifying AI," and you can get that free at netsuite.com/bartlett. That's netsuite.com/bartlett.