Cathie Wood made one thing clear at the Florida Automated Vehicles Summit: The future of tech will be electric, autonomous and artificial intelligence-powered.
Wood spoke in an on-stage interview in Tampa on Thursday evening, where she shared her market predictions, the Ark Investment Management team's research, Elon Musk moments and advice for startups. Her primary focus in the discussion was the potential for technological disruptions from innovations like autonomous driving vehicles.
Autonomous taxi platforms will generate $8 trillion to $10 trillion in revenue in the next five years, she said. That corresponds to the convergence the tech world is seeing with electric and AI, which directs and informs most self-driving cars.
Simply put, to be successful, tech companies need to have a developed, usable product with a low cost, she said.
Companies like Tesla aren't simply successful because of the car. It's the software and intelligence the company compiles that make it successful. Investors who define Tesla as an auto company instead of a broad-based technology company have "missed the mark."
"Autonomous transportation is the biggest AI project the world will face during the next 10 to 20 years," said Wood, Ark's CEO and founder.
One possible obstacle for these companies is having enough data to effectively get autonomous vehicles on the road. Otherwise, companies must find new ways to collect "quirky" data — data that can't be replicated in a simulated environment or routine driving — to be the first to scale broadly.
Tesla differentiates itself from other self-driving companies because it's collecting millions of miles of driving data every day, she said.
"It's a winner take most world, too. Anything involving AI is tending toward a 'winner take most.' The company that gets, or the autonomous taxi platform that gets, a person from point A to point B, as quickly and safely as possible, is probably going to win the lion's share of the market," Wood said to the audience.
Wood predicts Nvidia, the graphics card company, will blow up with the rise of AI because of its applicability to the technology. It's a company that represents the disruption she's looking for with Ark Invest.
"This wasn't even a startup; this was a company that had been working toward this future and saw this future years ago. But in the public equity markets, the short-sightedness is astonishing," Wood said.
Her appreciation for Musk was another recurring theme. She talked about speaking with him on a podcast, which she called thrilling, and shared how they connected after the Tesla CEO shared a colleague's Tweet. The moderator even asked if she would take over Tesla for Musk, pointing at her. She responded adamantly and repeated, "No, no, no."
Finally, she offered some advice to young entrepreneurs and startups in the audience. She did not mention anyone in St. Petersburg specifically, where, in 2021, she famously moved her firm from New York City.
Individuals who are aiming to be on the software side of autonomous mobility and AI are well-suited for the future, she said.
"The most important decision you have to make is to make sure you're on the right side of change because, just like we're talking about in the traditional sector, there's going to be a lot of carnage," she said, referring to the traditional sector of driving and fuel vehicles.
