Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management announced it has a stake in beloved Silicon Valley artificial intelligence company OpenAI and is betting that the nascent artificial intelligence industry will reshape the tech landscape.
In an email to clients Thursday, Ark said, “As of April 10, 2024, Ark Venture Fund is investing in OpenAI,” referring to its $54 million venture fund. “OpenAI is at the forefront of the Cambrian explosion of artificial intelligence capabilities,” the technology-focused asset manager said in a note.
Ark’s closed-end fund, launched in September 2022, invests in both public and private companies, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Epic Games Inc., Freenome Holdings Inc. and Relation Therapeutics.
“Our fund is relatively new and small, and frankly, for us, the incremental progress in fund models has been faster than we even expected,” Ark chief futurist and investment committee member Brett Winton said in an interview. “We think there will be $16 trillion in potential market capitalization by 2030, driven by fundamental-type companies.”
OpenAI has raised huge sums of money, much of it from Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion. The company also allowed some employees to sell shares through a so-called tender offer. $86 billion valuation. Ark said he invested in the company through a special purpose vehicle, but declined to go into detail. OpenAI did not comment on the bet.
The startup will represent about 4% of Ark’s venture fund assets, Winton said. Ark also has a stake in rival Anthropic, which accounts for about 5% of the same fund.
Wooda most famous car, the Ark Innovation ETF, rose to fame at the height of the pandemic after making big bets on companies like Tesla Inc. The exchange-traded fund has stumbled this year as the electric-vehicle maker’s share price fell.
The venture fund consists mainly of private companies – about 80% of the total number of holdings. The value of his assets is updated dailyto provide the most fair value to everyday investors in Ark’s product, Winton said.
“The Sora model is absolutely stunning,” Winton said, referring to the recently released OpenAI project. convert text to video generative artificial intelligence tool. “The accelerating pace of innovation is staggering, so we wanted to learn about it.”