- Cathie Wood's Ark Invest on Monday bought 158,187 shares in General Motors, its first stake in the car giant.
- It marks a change of heart for Wood, who has said legacy automakers "don't have the DNA" for innovation.
- Ark's Autonomous Tech. & Robotics ETF bought the shares, worth over $6 million, as GM makes an EV push.
One of Cathie Wood's Ark Invest funds has snapped up about $6 million worth of General Motors shares, making its first investment in the US automaker as it steps up its push into electric vehicles.
Ark's Autonomous Tech. & Robotics (ARKQ) exchange-traded fund bought 158,187 shares of GM on Monday, according to a trading update from the company. The shares are worth $6.05 million, based on Monday's closing price of $38.26 for the auto giant, and are less than 1% of the ARKQ portfolio.
Ark invests in disruptive technology companies like Tesla and Zoom, and its first stake in GM reflects its interest in the promise of electric vehicles' future. After a century of producing gas-powered vehicles, GM plans to go deep on electric power, and it has pledged to spend $35 billion on electric and self-driving cars through 2025.
The move seems to show a change of heart by Wood as to whether legacy automakers are too late to the EV game. In November, she told Barron's they "don't have the DNA for this brave new world," given they "were born in the industrial, gas-powered age."
Despite those jabs, Wood told Yahoo Finance in April she was "keeping an open mind" on investing in GM after meeting its CEO Mary Barra. "I'm fascinated how Mary Barra is really turning that ship around," Wood said.
The Ark CEO has been a longtime champion of Tesla — which GM wants to overtake in EVs — telling Yahoo Finance earlier this year that the firm's "confidence remains highest in Tesla." Noting the Elon Musk-led company is the only one to have designed its own AI chip, she has remained bullish on the stock, setting a price target of $4,600 by 2026.
On Monday, though, two of Ark's other funds — Ark Innovation (ARKK) and Ark Next Generation Internet (ARKW) — trimmed their holding of Tesla by 41,754. But Tesla is still the second-biggest holding in Ark's portfolios, which have fallen this year as growth stocks struggled in the face of the Federal Reserve's aggressive plan for interest-rate hikes.