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- Mark Cuban echoed Cathie Wood's views after "The Big Short" investor Michael Burry bet against her.
- The "Shark Tank" star touted AI, one of Wood's investment themes, as a huge competitive advantage.
- Cuban has also expressed similar views to Wood on topics such as cryptocurrencies.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Cathie Wood is battling a fresh wave of skepticism after Michael Burry of "The Big Short" fame revealed a bet against her flagship exchange-traded fund last week. At least the Ark Invest chief has another high-profile technology investor in her corner: Mark Cuban.
Wood defended her grand vision of mass disruption and technological revolution in a Twitter thread, after Burry's Scion Asset Management disclosed it held bearish put options against shares of Ark's Disruptive Innovation ETF as of June 30. Cuban, a "Shark Tank" investor and the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, backed Wood up by trumpeting the power of artificial intelligence, one of her key investment themes.
"There are 2 kinds of companies in the world: Those who originate their own AI successfully, and everyone else," Cuban tweeted in response to Wood. "The top companies are AI dominate and running away from their Non-AI competitors. AI's competitive advantage is exponential, but nowhere to be seen on a Balance Sheet."
Wood replied that her fund "couldn't agree more."
The Ark chief's signature ETF holds positions in Tesla, Teladoc Health, Square, and other companies that are investing heavily in AI. She expects AI to contribute to an explosion of innovation that will transform the world over the next decade.
Cuban has expressed similar views to Wood in recent years. For example, he's praised Tesla CEO Elon Musk, likened the cryptocurrency boom to the rise of e-commerce in the 1990s, and underscored the rich potential of nascent technologies such as decentralized finance, or DeFi.
In her Twitter thread, Wood gave kudos to Burry for his billion-dollar bet against the housing bubble, which was chronicled in the book and the movie "The Big Short." However, she asserted that Burry didn't understand the fundamentals of the innovation space, and failed to appreciate the investment opportunities available.