Buying Into the Selloff
Ark Invest purchased 210,121 shares of SpaceX (Nasdaq: SPCX) worth about $32.5 million at Monday’s close. The buy was spread across four of the firm’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs), led by the flagship Ark Innovation ETF, which picked up 131,837 shares. The Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF, Ark Next Generation Internet ETF, and Ark Space Exploration & Innovation ETF accounted for the rest.
The timing was particularly noteworthy as SpaceX shares fell 16% on Monday, dipping as low as $154.60, their lowest level since the company’s first day of trading, after the firm said it would sell investment-grade bonds for the first time to fund its artificial-intelligence ambitions. Where many investors saw a warning, Wood saw a discount.
The move is vintage Cathie, given the founder has built her reputation on high-conviction, contrarian bets on disruptive technology, and her funds have a long record of buying into sharp drawdowns. She has applied that same playbook to crypto, repeatedly buying the dip in bitcoin-linked assets when prices fall.
Funded by Trimming AMD and Roku
The SpaceX buying has not been free and to finance its position, Ark has sold hundreds of millions of dollars in other holdings. The firm unloaded roughly $163 million in stock on June 16 (cutting stakes in Roku, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and 10x Genomics) to fund continued SpaceX purchases, and had sold an estimated $327 million ahead of the IPO.
To elaborate, the firm unloaded about 80,536 AMD shares worth roughly $39 million and 98,835 Roku shares worth about $12 million, redeploying the proceeds into Musk’s company. For a manager known for concentrated bets, the reshuffling marks SpaceX as a top-tier conviction holding.
A Bigger Bet on Musk
The dip buy adds to a position Ark established within hours of the listing. On June 12, the firm bought 3,291,184 SPCX shares for about $444 million on the stock’s first trading day, one of the largest single-day purchases in Ark’s history. SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 per share, opened at $150, and closed near $161 (a debut gain of nearly 20%).
The stock then went parabolic, surging to an all-time high of $225.64 on June 16, briefly pushing SpaceX’s market capitalization past $2.7 trillion, before a three-day slide erased a large chunk of those gains. Elon Musk’s net worth fell about $150 billion in a single day during the rout, though he remains the world’s wealthiest person by a long shot.
Ark’s SpaceX bet also carries a bitcoin angle given SpaceX is one of the largest corporate holders of bitcoin, with an 18,712 BTC treasury revealed around its IPO, meaning every SPCX share carries indirect exposure to the cryptocurrency. Wood herself is among the most vocal institutional bitcoin bulls in the market today (with Ark holding bitcoin exposure across its funds).
In recent years, Wood has set a long-term bitcoin price target of $1.5 million, posturing the asset as a “new Bretton Woods” and a hedge against currency debasement. She has also predicted the broader crypto market to swell to $25 trillion by 2030.
What’s Next
The open question now is whether Wood’s timing proves prescient or premature since SpaceX’s bond sale could mark the start of sustained selling pressure, or a temporary reset after an overheated debut. Musk has projected the company could reach roughly $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030, a target that will test investor patience as it takes on debt. Consequently, Ark is betting that the dip is an opportunity (a big one at that).
