Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management has taken new positions in Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg. Co. Ltd. (ADR) (NYSE:TSM) after exiting the companies nearly a year and a half ago, according to a Bloomberg News report.
Wood’s flagship Ark Innovation exchange-traded fund (ETF) bought 174,848 shares of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, on Monday, while the Ark Autonomous Technology and Robotics ETF purchased 98,170 shares of chip bellwether TSMC, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The purchases increase Ark's exposure to artificial intelligence, with Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) remaining the biggest AI play in its portoflio, including its flagship fund, Wood told Bloomberg in a television interview.
However, she's now less keen on NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA), a stock the firm bought in 2014, which she said was priced against the curve after it had risen 80-fold since it first invested.
While many investors had considered the company a gaming chip stock, Wood Tweeted last month that Ark Invest’s first principles research pointed to it as the premier equity play on artificial intelligence (AI).
Other companies were also positioned to do well from their exposure to AI, she said. Companies like TSMC.
"Other companies with visionary leaders, strong global distribution and, perhaps most important, large high-quality pools of proprietary data should be big #AI winners, with revenues and earnings surprising significantly on the high side of expectations during the years ahead," Wood tweeted.
She told Bloomberg that the decision to drop NVIDIA was due to growing competition. She also praised Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg for switching his priority to AI from the metaverse.
Meanwhile, analysts have attributed TSMC’s stronger-than-expected May sales to the initial benefit from increased demand for its AI-related wafers. The company is the world's largest semiconductor foundry and makes chips for giants including NVIDIA, Apple and Advanced Micro Devices.
Contact the author at stephen.gunnion@proactiveinvestors.com