What is Cathie Wood’s net worth?
Based on the latest available 2025 data, Cathie Wood’s net worth is estimated at $229.6 million.
Cathie Wood made her money the new-fashioned way — by launching ARK Invest, a company that invests “solely in disruption innovation.”1 In the early 2020s she rode that strategy to the pinnacle of investment firms when her flagship ARK Innovation Fund grew nearly 150%, then soared to its peak in Feb. 2021 before dropping precipitously that same year.
Here’s a closer look at how Wood built her ARK (an acronym for “active research knowledge,” but also named for the Ark of the Covenant, not Noah’s) and what Wood construction has done for investment portfolios.2
How did Cathie Wood make her fortune?
Wood is a founder of ARK Invest (ARK Investment Management LLC), which she registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Jan. 2014. She currently is CEO, chief investment officer — and “majority beneficial owner,” according to Morningside.3 In its March 25, 2025 Form ADV Part 2A, a document required to be filed by federally registered firms, ARK calls Wood its “principal owner” and lists its total assets under management as $26.273 billion.4
We don’t know how large a majority of ARK belongs to Wood. The expense ratios for five ARK managed funds are 0.75%, however, making ARK’s earnings on just 1 billion of a 0.75% fund $7.5 million. A significant chunk of that likely goes to Wood.
Wood brought to ARK assets from a career in finance that included managing over $5 billion at AllianceBernstein and co-founding the approximately $800-million hedge fund Tupelo Capital Management.
Whatever her current net worth, it has likely declined considerably since ARK’s height in 2020 and 2021 (Wood made the Forbes list of richest self-made women both years). In March 2025, Morningstar listed ARK first on its “Top 10 Value-Destroying Fund Families Over the Past 10 Years,” having lost $13.36 billion in value between 2014 and 2024.5
As of April 10, 2025, Morningstar rated the parent firm as “Below Average,” with total net assets of US ETFs at $9.48 billion. It listed investment flows at $-3.60 billion and an asset growth rate of -26.97. However, it also noted that — despite ARK’s $13.4 billion realized and unrealized losses — “Both ARK Innovation and the other funds in the group earned a positive total return over the 10-year period ended in 2024.”6
Cathie Wood’s holdings
As ARK Invest points out in its new report, Big Ideas 2025, “five innovative platforms are catalyzing accelerated growth”: public blockchains, AI, energy storage, robotics and multiomics (ever-cheaper technologies that provide access to “DNA, RNA, protein, and digital health data”).7 ARK’s 103 combined holdings — distributed (in the US)8 across Wood’s 12 ETFs, the ARK Venture Fund and its two private funds, plus funds in 13 other countries — embody this investing strategy.9 It’s also visible in her biggest investments, which all have a technology component. Here’s how the top 10 list breaks down by GICS sector:
Consumer discretionary
- Tesla (both an automotive and energy company and ARK’s biggest holding)
Technology
- Palentir (tech for analyzing vast amounts of data)
- Shopify (internet infrastructure for business)
Financial services
- Coinbase (provides these for the cryptocurrency industry)
- Robinhood (brokerage platform with commission-free trading)
Communication services
- Roblox (videogames)
- Roku (TV streaming)
Health care
- Tempus (health information services)
- CRISPR Technologies (gene-editing technology)
ARK’s 10th largest investment is its own Bitcoin Holding Company. Digital assets/cryptocurrency is not considered a sector, but does fit the Wood “disruption innovation” strategy.
ARK Invest’s Top 10 Holdings
Source: All 101 Combined Holdings of the ARK ETFs, April 27, 202510
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Cathie Wood's salary info
ARK Invest is a privately held investment company and a federally registered investment advisor. The SEC requires federally registered firms to list compensation for the firm, but not salaries of key employees.
"Ms. Wood will receive a salary, and is the principal owner of ARK, currently controlling approximately 72% of all equity interests in ARK, and can receive earnings from ARK. She is also eligible to receive a bonus based on the quality of the advisory services and the overall financial performance of ARK," states ARK’s March 25, 2025 Form ADV Part 2A.
Morningside reports her as a “majority beneficial owner.”11
If, to be conservative, being a “majority beneficial owner” means 50% ownership, then $7.5 million/year fees on $9.48 billion in ARK ETF holdings could yield $35.55 million annually. The net on that — given that ARK must pay for salaries and commissions, insurance, expenses, taxes, etc. — is likely far lower.
We also don’t know Wood’s actual salary, bonus, tangible assets or income from other holdings. In 2022, Forbes reported her estimated net worth at $140 — a huge drop from the previous year’s estimated $400 million high. Wood hasn’t been on the Forbes list of richest self-made women since 2021.12
At the end of April 2022, according to Forbes, ARK’s assets were $16 billion, down from over $60 billion in Feb. 2021. In March 2025, ARK reported its assets under management at $26.273 billion, roughly 64% higher than in the 2022 Forbes number. Extrapolate that number and we can estimate Wood’s current net worth at $229.6 million.
Key milestones in Cathie Wood's career
- 2000. Tupelo Capital, a hedge fund Wood co-founded, manages approximately $800 million in global thematic strategies.
- 2001-13. Wood manages over $5 billion as CIO of Global Strategies for AllianceBernstein. But the firm doesn’t greenlight her idea of creating a fund focused on high-risk, “disruptive innovation” investments. Wood leaves to found ARK.
- Jan. 2014. Wood registers ARK Investment Management LLC as an investment advisor with the SEC.
- 2020. Five of ARK’s seven ETFs reach an average 141% return; three are top performers among all U.S. funds. She’s named one of Barron’s 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance — and also one of the Forbes America’s Richest Self-Made Women.
- 2025. Despite considerable losses since 2022, as well as some growth from its lowest point, ARK remains a $26.273 billion fund, continuing to pursue its disruptive innovation strategy.
Cathie Wood's investment strategies
Investing and research-based strategy are what’s made Cathie Wood’s fortune: She is a leading proponent of thematic investing, in which portfolios are built around companies that embody broad trends, such as the genomics revolution, tech and robotics, and the metaverse.
Cathie Wood’s investment approach centers on disruptive innovation, a theme reflected in ARK Invest’s Big Ideas 2025 report, which identifies five core technologies fueling exponential growth: public blockchains, AI, energy storage, robotics, and multiomics. Her strategy is executed through 103 holdings spread across ARK’s U.S. ETFs, the ARK Venture Fund, private funds, and international vehicles — all designed to capture the potential of these transformative platforms.
Wood was a speaker at a December AI panel at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, where she reportedly “told the group that advancements in AI, blockchain and life sciences could propel GDP growth from the current 3% to 6.8% range to as high as 10% by 2040,” describing the shift “as a ‘good deflation,’ where technological breakthroughs drive down prices while simultaneously accelerating productivity and economic expansion.”13
ARK’s — and the world economy’s — current situation has not driven Wood to seek another strategy.
In commentary on Q1 2025, published on the ARK website, Wood said, “ARK’s research suggests that a series of rolling recessions began in the spring of 2022, when the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) tightened monetary policy and raised interest rates by 22-fold in little more than a year….” She pointed to the “Five Innovation Platforms” around which ARK has centered its research and investing,” noting that they” could play an outsized role in pulling the economy out of the rolling recession, potentially salvaging corporate margins as inflation gives way to deflation in many sectors over the next few years.” 14
And in ARK’s March 2025 MARKet UPdate WEbinar, she “ highlighted that recent market weakness likely has priced in much of the near-term risk, and that the setup for financial markets in the second half of 2025 could be favorable—especially as the productivity gains from innovation platforms like AI, robotics, energy storage, and multiomics begin to materialize.15
Though Wood has mixed feelings about tariffs, she calls them “shock therapy,” she made her own bet by buying $22 million of battered Coinbase stock in early April 2025.16
And she’s had some wins. Although 2025 saw her biggest ETF drop almost 20%, it is still doing better than last year.
The enormous rise of NVIDIA since ARK sold out in Jan. 2023 may remain a wound, but its more-recent decline has become her opportunity.17 (On April 22, Wood bought 11,000 shares of now-battered stock.18)
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About Cathie Wood: Personal life and history
Catherine Duddy Wood, 69, was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 26, 1955, where her parents were immigrants from Ireland. She was raised in the City of Angels, then went on to attend University of Southern California (USC), receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in finance and economics, summa cum laude, in 1981 and a Master of Science degree in business administration in 1983.
One of her professors — who became a mentor — was Arthur Laffer, the noted supply-side economist. He connected her to the Capital Group, where she got her first job as an assistant economist.
Wood currently lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., where she moved her firm from New York City in 2021. She’s even featured on the Become St. Pete economic development website: “I’ve now become St. Pete’s official ambassador,” she declares. “I mean, all my life I’ve said I will never live in Florida, and here I am. I went to St. Pete, and found it is a young, vibrant town focused on culture, arts, music, and a lot of tourism. It’s very clean, very lovely, and has very friendly people from all over the place.”19
Wood has three children: Caitlin, Caroline and Robert. Her husband, Robert Wood, from whom she was divorced, died in 2018.
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Julia Kagan is a personal finance editor and writer with decades of experience covering retirement planning, consumer issues, and health care. She previously served as editor of Consumer Reports and Psychology Today, and was personal finance editor at Investopedia for nearly 10 years.
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