Ark’s Cathie Wood Predicts Future of Technology and Innovation
Investors everywhere want to know what investment star Cathie Wood, chief executive of Ark Investment Management, thinks about where the markets are heading.
Wood’s success with her investments over time, despite a recent decline in her Ark Innovation ETF, has investors watching her every move and listening to her comments. People want to know what the next move will be.
The investment community can get a good idea of what Wood is thinking about the future of technology and innovation from Ark Investment Management’s Big Ideas 2022, where the star investor spells out her predictions.
Cathie Wood Sees Significant Innovation and Technological Advances Ahead
Wood on Friday took time out from her busy investing schedule to chat with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on a podcast about her predictions for innovation and technology through 2030. She said society has not seen the amount change that’s about to occur in history. The last time such significant changes occurred was in the early 20th Century with the introduction of the telephone, electricity and the automobile.
Five innovation platforms that are currently evolving and converging at the same time, Wood said, are artificial intelligence, robotics, energy storage, DNA sequencing and blockchain technology.
“All of them are on exponential growth trajectories and are converging with each other,” Wood told Hayes.
Over the next 10 years, Wood said she believes the market cap associated with the five platforms that include 14 transformative technologies will scale at a 30% compounded annual rate of return.
The five platforms are expected to have increased equity market returns from a total $13.7 trillion in 2020 to a projected $202.6 trillion in 2030.
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Ark Management’s Big Ideas 2022 report identified 14 transformative technologies that it said are approaching tipping points as costs drop and unleash demand across sectors and geographies, spawning more innovation.
Those 14 technologies include mobile connected devices, gene editing, digital wallets, blockchain, cloud computing, gene sequencing, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, living therapies, battery technology, reusable rockets, robotics, autonomous mobility and 3D printing.
Wood noted in the podcast that a convergence is taking place among battery technology, A.I. and robotics that is bringing down the costs of electric vehicles. She said electric vehicle costs were prohibitively high until recently.
“The total cost of ownership of an electric vehicle is lower today than it is for a gas-powered vehicle,” Wood said.
Ark’s Wood: Renewable Energy Could Fuel Bitcoin Mining
Wood said that solar energy systems in homes will be more affordable as solar roofs become part of the infrastructure of a house instead of the current situation of solar power being a consumer installation debt.
A proliferation of solar energy inclusion in homes, she said, could lead to expansion of bitcoin mining as the overflow of solar energy from homes could be used for bitcoin mining. If solar and wind energy feeds bitcoin mining, it could also accelerate a shift toward renewable energy sources.
Wood also said that A.I. will be beneficial in converging with all of the platforms, including the genomics space where it can converge with gene therapies and curing diseases.
