Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest scoops up 4.5m Circle shares post-market debut

The latest portfolio activity of the Cathie Wood-led investment firm Ark Invest has revealed a major investment in Circle shares.

Following the debut of CRCL, the long-awaited initial public offering of stablecoin issuer Circle on the New York Stock Exchange, Wood’s Ark Invest poured an estimated $373 million into the stock, acquiring a total of 4.5 million shares.

The purchases were spread across three of Ark’s actively managed ETFs: 1) ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), 2) ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW), and 3) ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF), allocating 3,025,089 CRCL, 927,318 CRCL, and 524,153 CRCL, respectively.

Circle’s stock opened for trading on the NYSE on June 5. The stablecoin issuer priced its IPO at $31 per share but opened for trading at $69. Shares hit an intra day high of $103.75 before giving back some gains and closing the day at $83.23.

The new purchase followed some selling activity. Ark Invest trimmed positions in Coinbase’s COIN, Robinhood’s HOOD, and its own Bitcoin ETF, ARKB.

Cathie Wood is renowned for her vocal advocacy for Bitcoin and the crypto industry, and the latest purchase highlights her reputation of strategic portfolio diversification. The latest CRCL acquisition is not ARK’s only large-scale investment. Just days earlier, the firm increased its stake in TEM, the native stock of the health-tech company using artificial intelligence to enhance clinical diagnostics Tempus AI, to a total of $284.8 million.

Ark Invest also holds significant positions across several other major players such as Tesla (TSLA), Nvidia (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA).