ARK Invest bought 3,291,184 shares of SpaceX (SPCX) as Elon Musk’s company completed the largest IPO in history on Friday, a position worth roughly $444 million at execution and more than $500 million by the close, putting Cathie Wood at the center of the year’s defining trade.
The shares priced at $135 for the sale and closed their first session at $160.95, a gain of more than 19.2% over the offer. SpaceX reached the public market through a deal that priced 555.56 million shares at $135 each to raise $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation, the largest US IPO on record and the biggest ever by nominal proceeds, surpassing Saudi Aramco’s 2019 listing. The buy places Wood firmly behind newly public equity at a moment when her firm, long one of the most vocal bitcoin bulls in the market, is steering fresh capital toward space and artificial intelligence rather than crypto.
ARK Sold Across Its Book to Buy SpaceX
SpaceX was the only purchase across ARK’s funds on Friday, a rare single-name conviction buy for a firm that usually spreads its trades. The ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) did most of the buying and ended the day with the stock at 3.28% of its portfolio, a meaningful weighting for a position opened in a single session.
Wood raised the cash by selling almost everything else. The firm liquidated close to $280 million of stock in the week before the listing, then sold another $48 million across 13 companies on Friday, including Advanced Micro Devices, Roku and Baidu. The pattern shows Wood trimming mature technology names to clear room for a single high-growth bet rather than adding new money to the funds.
Wood Pulls Risk Capital Out of Crypto
A first-day pop of almost 20% on the largest IPO in history points to institutions paying up for high-growth risk again. The hottest trade now runs through a wave of AI and space listings, with OpenAI and Anthropic also filing to go public, and demand for SpaceX ran far ahead of supply as investors reallocated out of crypto and tech shares to take part. Risk capital is finite, and a bitcoin bull like Wood rotating toward those listings rather than adding to crypto suggests funds will keep being pulled out of crypto markets in the near term.
Source: SosovalueARK’s own flows underline the shift with the firm’s spot bitcoin ETF closed last week with a net buy for the first time since the week of May 15, accumulating $39.01 million of bitcoin at an average price of $63,589, according to SosoValue. That purchase broke four straight weeks of selling that pulled roughly $505.33 million out of the position, almost the same sum Wood has just committed to SpaceX.