Cathie Wood On Tesla’s Robotics Bet, Bitcoin vs. Gold, and the AI CapEx Boom
episodePreviously titled “Cathie Wood on Tesla’s Robotics Bet, Bitcoin vs. Gold, and the AI CapEx Boom” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome back to the Rundown interview edition. Today, we are talking to Kathy Wood, the CEO of ARK Invest. Kathy is a legend in the investing space. She's known for investing in disruptive technologies. So in today's conversation, we talked about the big themes for 2026, including AI, robotics, and robo-taxis. We also talked about Tesla's advantages moving forward, why Elon might merge XAI and SpaceX, and a fun debate about Bitcoin versus gold. I got to say, this was one of my favorite interviews I've ever done. I think you guys are really going to enjoy this one. So let's get into it. Kathy Wood, welcome to The Rundown.
Thank you, Zaid. I'm really happy to be joining you today.
I'm super excited to talk to you. This is a big moment for me. And I wanted to start off by talking about the yearly ARK Big Idea Report. I look forward to it every year, and you guys just posted it last week. And the theme from this report is the Great Acceleration. Now, I like the title, but I feel like we've been moving pretty fast the last few years. So what's interesting is you guys think that we're going to move even faster. I think the big takeaway for me after reading the report was that you think that AI investment, CapEx investment is going to accelerate. I think the number you threw out there in this report was 12% of GDP, which is shocking, especially when you compare it to previous CapEx booms like the automobile and railroad.
I think those capped out at 3%. four to 5%. So I want to turn it over to you. Why are you so bullish on this particular cycle of the CapEx boom when it comes to AI?
Well, it is because AI is the catalyst to all of the other innovation platforms to speeding them up as well. There's a great convergence taking place. So if you think about robo-taxis, it's the convergence among robots. Robo-taxis are robots, obviously. Energy storage, they will be electric. and AI, they'll be powered by AI. They couldn't exist without AI. And we think that that's going to scale to a global revenue generation opportunity of more than $10 trillion in the next five to 10 years from almost nothing today. And another example of a convergence is in the healthcare space. Many people don't think about technology as much or AI as much when they think about healthcare, but it's probably the most profound application of AI, and it's the convergence of sequencing technologies, including single cell sequencing.
We each have 35 to 40 trillion cells in our bodies, and now we're going to be able to sequence down to the cell level. So sequencing technologies, AI, And then CRISPR gene editing, which is able to edit out programming errors that we are now able to find thanks to the convergence between AI and DNA sequencing, well, all kinds of sequencing.
So you think that AI is going to be the engine that drives innovations in all these other fields like healthcare, robo-taxis, transportation. But you can make the case that we've had – you can make the same case for the internet, right? The internet innovated so many different industries.
Yes.
And there was a boom and bust in that industry as well. Are you sure the market is going to kind of put up with this kind of spending that we're seeing in AI, or are they going to start rejecting it like we saw with the AI bust back in 2000?
right there's a huge wall of worry the strongest bull markets are climbing walls of worry i remember i was in the internet well the tech and telecom bubble as it's called and there was no worry at all the only the only investors worrying were value investors because they thought they'd lose their businesses, right?
What is the Great Acceleration and its significance?
And they ended up having the last laugh back then. But the most senior portfolio managers and investors in our industry today, they were fairly young during the tech and telecom bubble. They now have the gray hairs and they're saying, been there, done that. I am not going to get caught in that kind of a mess again. So we have, you know, Two steps forward, one step back as you get that kind of worry. And the reason we think this is not like the internet is because we have so many technologies now.
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