Cathie Wood is known to double down on volatile technology stocks when others start backing away.
This week, she’s loading up on Cerebras Systems (CBRS), the newest publicly traded AI chip company that’s looking to challenge Nvidia (NVDA). Ark Invest scooped up 93,290 Cerebras shares through its ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) and ARK Next Generation Internet ETF on August 25, a position worth $17.2 million, as per Ark’s daily fund disclosures.
That said, that isn’t her first recent purchase.
Ark scooped up another 35,000 shares on August 18, the same day Cerebras tanked 12.7% during its closely watched Supernova product event, according to Yahoo Finance data.
The timing is interesting, with Cerebras surging 15.1% a day earlier before reversing course, and by August 26, the stock had dropped for six consecutive sessions.
At the same time, Wood’s flagship ARK Innovation ETF surged 10.16% for the year through August 26, while the S&P 500 gained 12.1%, according to Yahoo Finance.
For perspective, the fund grabbed investor attention during the pandemic after it surged 152.8% in 2020, blowing past the S&P 500’s 16.3% gain, according to Yahoo Finance data. That outperformance helped turn Wood into one of the market’s most prominent tech investors, although ARKK later tanked sharply as interest rates rose.
That sluggishness beckons the question of whether her latest Cerebras bet is a timely buy on an AI rebound or another risky move into a volatile stock.
Cathie Wood remains bullish on AI stocks
Wood’s Cerebras buy fits into her broader bet on AI, which she believes could reshape productivity, corporate spending, and economic expansion.
In a March interview with Bloomberg, Wood pointed to a 2.8% year-over-year bump in U.S. nonfarm productivity, arguing that the broader use of AI tools could push annual productivity growth as high as 6%.
Ark’s forecasts are perhaps even more ambitious.
In her 2026 outlook, Wood said productivity growth could potentially surge 4% to 6% during the next few years with AI converging with robotics, energy storage, blockchain, and biotechnology, according to Ark Invest.
Also Read: Cathie Wood sells $4 million of surging AI stock
Moreover, the deflationary aspect to AI sits at the heart of her thesis. CoinDesk reports Ark estimating that AI training costs are dropping nearly 75% annually, while the cost of running AI models is dropping by as high as 99% a year on some benchmarks. Wood believes those drops could encourage a lot more businesses to use more computing power.
That’s exactly where Cerebras enters the conversation.
Ark’s Big Ideas 2026 report estimates that annual investment in data-center systems might climb from nearly $500 billion in 2025 to about $1.4 trillion by 2030. More spending is directed toward accelerated servers and specialized processors custom-made for AI workloads.
Moreover, Wood isn’t relying on one winner.
According to recent disclosures, Ark has been adding Nvidia (NVDA), Broadcom (AVGO), Cerebras, CoreWeave (CRWV), and Cloudflare (NET) to build the fund’s exposure across cloud computing, AI chips, and network-related infrastructure.
She recently said, “I think we’re still early in seeing how far that can go,” adding that businesses using AI effectively will “separate themselves from the ones that don’t.”
At the same time, she’s been buying heavily into SpaceX (SPCX), purchasing as much as $28.1 million on August 21. CEO Elon Musk believes the company’s surprisingly large AI business could eventually surpass its launch and other space-focused businesses.
It’s important to note, though, that this strategy entails a ton of risk with AI companies spending heavily, valuations remaining elevated, and the eventual winners are far from settled.
Why Cathie Wood is betting on Cerebras
Wood’s Cerebras bet is simple in that Nvidia can continue to stay dominant in its ways, while Cerebras wins out on a slice of the AI chip market.
Put simply, Cerebras develops enormous processors using almost the entire silicon wafer. Traditional AI systems connect several smaller GPUs, creating data-traffic bottlenecks. Cerebras layers computing power, memory, and bandwidth on one giant chip, which enables AI models to produce answers a lot quicker.
Its newest CS-4 system is drawing a ton of attention.
Cerebras says it could generate over 4,400 tokens per second per user and deliver inference speeds up to 30 times faster than GPU-based systems, according to company benchmarks.
A major validation comes from OpenAI.
The ChatGPT maker agreed to add 750 megawatts of Cerebras computing capacity through 2028. Cerebras valued that tremendous multiyear agreement at over $20 billion, while OpenAI says the technology will help models respond much faster.
Growth is arriving quickly as well
Q2 sales jumped 74% to $180.1 million, while Cerebras’ preferred core sales measure more than doubled to $209.9 million, according to Reuters. Moreover, cloud revenue skyrocketed 281% to $126 million, according to the company.
However, the financial picture also explains the stock’s recent doldrums.
According to Investing, shares plummeted 16% after the report as core gross margin dropped to 40.6% from 46.5%, and the company posted a $450.5 million net loss. Also, renting computing capacity to satisfy demand also pressured margins.
Cerebras bumped its 2026 core revenue forecast to between $880 million and $890 million, but investors are still looking for evidence that it can scale profitably.
Scaling profitably is exactly what Nvidia has done with its AI chip business, which is why Jim Cramer remains skeptical that competitors can do the same so quickly, as I recently covered.
Cathie Wood’s biggest AI stock bets
- Tesla (TSLA): 9.52%
- Tempus AI (TEM): 5.16%
- Palantir Technologies (PLTR): 3.60%
- Advanced Micro Devices (AMD): 3.60%
- CoreWeave: 3.37%
- Amazon (AMZN): 2.71%
- Cerebras: 2.58%
- Nvidia: 2.31%
- Alphabet (GOOG and GOOGL): 2.25% combined
- Meta Platforms (META): 1.43%
- Broadcom: 1.31%
- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM): 1.08%
- Cloudflare: 0.98%
- Source: Cathie’s Ark. ARKK portfolio weights were accessed on Aug. 27, 2026.
Nevertheless, Wood’s wager is that Cerebras doesn’t need to dethrone Nvidia. It needs to turn its speed advantage into durable, long-term customers without letting manufacturing costs, heavy infrastructure spending, or Nvidia’s massive software ecosystem overwhelm its staggering opportunity.
Beyond Cerebras, Ark’s August 25 trades leaned mostly toward selling.
Wood shed 7,600 AMD shares worth about $3.5 million and 57,819 Tempus AI shares worth roughly $3.8 million, while also trimming Roblox (RBLX) and Twist Bioscience (TWST).
Related: Morgan Stanley sees big change coming for Alphabet stock