Kathy Wood talks about OpenAI investment and Tesla's Robotaxi

OpenAI recently raised $6.6 billion in a new funding round, valuing it at about $157 billion. One firm that is investing in OpenAI is Ark Invest.

Kathy Wood, CEO and CIO of ARK Invest, is betting big on AI OpenAI, he said, is “stealing the march” in the space, along with Anthropic, xAI, Google ( GOOG , GOOGL ) and Meta Platform ( META ).

While many investors are concerned about when companies will start seeing returns on their AI investments, Wood is optimistic. When asked about when OpenAI will start to make a profit, he points to the development of agentic AI, which he thinks companies will be able to charge more for.

Despite some recent executive departures at OpenAI, Wood remains confident in the startup's leadership, praising both CEO Sam Altman and CFO Sarah Freer. He noted that “what we see in companies that are growing very quickly from startups to scaling is that you need a different kind of management team.”

When it comes to competition between AI firms, Wood likes it. “Competition is good. It's going to make this space more competitive and more viable, I think, long-term,” he says.

Regarding the prospect of a company like OpenAI going public, Wood argues that “a lot of companies stay private for too long. They just don't want to deal with regulation in the public equity market. And they don't want to deal with very short-term oriented or short-term investments by shareholders in the public equity market.” horizon.” However, he thinks the public market could become more attractive as interest rates come down, and some of these companies are in the works if investors are willing to work for a longer time horizon.

Watch the video above to hear Wood discuss Tesla (TSLA) and its upcoming Robotaxi event.

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This post was written by Stephanie Mikulich.