Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management announces stake in Microsoft-backed OpenAI

Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management announced that it holds a stake in OpenAI. In an email to clients, as reported by Bloomberg, the company said, “As of April 10, 2024, the Ark Venture Fund invests in OpenAI,” referring to its $54 million VC fund. The asset manager added, “OpenAI is at the forefront of a Cambrian explosion in artificial intelligence capability.”

What Ark Chief Futurist and investment committee member said?

Ark Chief Futurist and investment committee member Brett Winton said, “Our fund is relatively new and small and for us, honestly, the incremental progress in the foundation model space has been quicker than even we had anticipated. We think that there’s $16 trillion in prospective market cap that will be commanded by foundation model-type companies by 2030.”

What you need about Ark Investment Management?

Ark Investment Management fund was launched in September 2022 and invests in both public and private firms. The fund has investments in Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Epic Games Inc., Freenome Holdings Inc. and Relation Therapeutics. The venture fund is made up of mostly private companies which are almost 80% of the total holdings. 

How much money has OpenAI has raised?

OpenAI raised huge sums of money from Microsoft which has put in $13 billion. The company has also allowed some employees to sell shares via a so-called tender offer at an $86 billion valuation and Ark has invested in the company through a special purpose vehicle. Brett Winton said that the startup will represent about 4% of the Ark venture fund’s holdings while the fund also has a stake in rival Anthropic that accounts for about 5% of the same fund.

Brett Winton said, “The Sora model is mind blowing. The acceleration in the pace of innovation is mind-blowing and so we wanted the exposure.”