Cathie Wood Talks ETFs
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Let's talk more about this non-ETF with Kathy Wood. She is CEO and CIO of ARK Invest. Kathy, great to have you with us. We'll get into the ETF conversation, but let's start with your holdings in your venture fund because I'm taking a look. It looks like your second biggest holding is SpaceX, of course, as we know. That is a private company, one of Elon Musk's companies. Right now, in talks to potentially merge with XAI and in talks potentially to IPO later this year. I mean, as you digest these news events, how are you feeling about your current slice in SpaceX, which I believe is about 7.5% of this fund?
Yes, we're feeling great, especially the rumors are. We have no idea if it will go out at $1.5 trillion. Again, rumors, rumors. But SpaceX has big ideas, orbital data centers being the latest, and XAI, which we also own in ARKVX. is going to become a part of this ecosystem. We do believe, and I think we're getting more information now, that this is becoming more and more likely.
What are Cathie Wood's current holdings in SpaceX?
So when SpaceX does make its debut on the public markets, when it lists, when it IPOs, what does that do to your fund? How do you respond to that?
Yes. The wonderful thing about ARKVX and interval funds generally, in terms of the way we've constructed this one, is that it's 20%, roughly 20% public, 80% private. And when SpaceX goes, we will obviously bump up the public position, but we don't have to sell it. Now, it would be unusual if all of these names, SpaceX, Anthropic, XAI, if they all were to go public, yes, we would want to diversify into more private names. We don't have to sell right away. Now, the other thing that our companies really like is that they can see we have $30 billion of assets under management, and most of those are in the public equity market. So we will be feeding these names into our ETFs as time goes on.
So Kathy, let's talk about this conundrum, right? This is one of the most fascinating topics to me that I'm writing about. You've got all these stocks, you have 500 million. Meanwhile, there's been three ETFs that have sort of, I don't know, what called bend the rules or whatever, but they've added privates into their funds. XOVR, immediately 1.5 billion. A CraneShares ETF has two privates. And then Ron B added 22% of SpaceX and immediately assets jumped 50% in a week. Clearly, the demand is to get this in the ETF format, but it's not the right format. How is this going to play out?
It's going to be very interesting. Eric, thank you for doing the research on this. And this space is moving very quickly.
How does Cathie Wood feel about SpaceX's potential IPO?
The reason we chose the interval fund format was we could have more than 15% of our fund in illiquid assets. Now, it may be that the definition of illiquid is changing. I know we actually have gone to some of our private companies, the ones in the interval fund, saying, hey, we'd love to add you here. into our ETFs because we think this is such an important story. All we do is focus on disruptive innovation. You are one of the biggest disruptors, let's just say SpaceX. And what we found over time is that they have been reticent So, something is changing here, Eric, and it would be very interesting to get to the bottom of it. The SEC, of course, is deregulating, so that could be part of it. Secondary markets are beginning to grow, meaning private shares on secondary markets, so there's access there.
So, maybe this definition of illiquid or less liquid is changing here.
Yeah, our understanding and Bloomberg Intelligence's understanding, Kathy, is that basically Barron classified their SpaceX holdings as less liquid rather than e-liquid. As we were talking about, we're learning that that comes from the issuer rather than the SEC. But you also make another interesting point when it comes to the private companies themselves maybe being a little bit reticent to be in a vehicle such as an ETF. Of course, we talk about it from the issuer perspective all the time. So interesting to hear it from the perspective of the companies.
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