CoreWeave, the cloud-computing provider supplying AI infrastructure, became a focal point for worries about how long AI funding can keep flowing. Its debt traded at stressed prices and its credit risk indicator hit a new peak. The stock fell 20% over three sessions, then recovered Thursday after Nvidia's Jensen Huang, whose company is CoreWeave's second-largest shareholder, said the firm's financing costs are coming down.
Wood said the episode is not unusual when rates are high, and that early-stage companies often face this scrutiny. She also said the AI ecosystem is at a "very early" stage.
Speaking in Seoul on Friday, Wood said ARK bought more of CoreWeave and Cerebras Systems Inc. as the market fell this week. She likened CoreWeave's setup to Coinbase, recalling how Coinbase's bonds were pressured before the company later rode crypto's growth. "Coinbase has evolved into a very strong, robust company and anyone who bought back then has been rewarded handsomely," she said. "This happens very often with young companies."
Wood was in Seoul for talks with Hanwha Asset Management on a tie-up to bring ARK's exchange traded products to South Korean investors. The country's equity market, led by memory giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, took the hardest hit from this week's global AI unwind. The Kospi sank 14% in the week, its worst showing since 2008.
She said today's lofty memory prices are unlikely to last. Those high prices helped deliver record profit growth at South Korean companies and lifted exports, benefiting the two largest chipmakers. "We need China and others to come in because we have to solve the problem of prices increasing on consumer devices because that's hurting demand," Wood said.
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Wood argued the current nerves are a healthy sign. "I'm talking about fear that AI, we're in a hype cycle. We do not believe we are, but the fact people are afraid means we are not in a bubble," she said. Her view: semis and cloud remain long-term winners, or as she put it, "While some people might say we're in the first inning, we would say we're still in the parking lot before we entered the baseball game."
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