Cathie Wood says AI is highly deflationary and her top picks include Twilio and UiPath

Published Thu, Oct 12 20231:28 PM EDTUpdated Thu, Oct 12 20232:01 PM EDT

Ark Invest's Cathie Wood said Thursday that the artificial intelligence boom is an antidote to inflation and a big driver of productivity. "AI is going to lead to one of the biggest improvements in productivity … which is highly anti-inflationary," Wood said at CNBC's Financial Advisor Summit . "When times get tough, innovation gains traction, and we think what is going to happen here is that companies are losing their pricing power." The CEO of Ark Invest said she expects the economy to slow down more than the consensus, and this would create an ideal environment for innovation and AI-driven companies to grow as firms seek to salvage profit margins during challenging times. The tech investor said she believes the biggest AI project out there right now is autonomous taxi platforms and Tesla will be a big winner in the space. Wood previously projected Tesla shares could hit $2,000 in five years on the back of a robotaxi boom. Another area for AI opportunities is software, Wood said. "For every dollar of hardware spent on AI, another $20 will be spent on software and that's where we think that people are under estimating the impact," Wood said. Her top picks in software include Meta Platforms , which she said is willing to open source "extremely good" large language models for its own purposes. Wood said she particularly values companies that know how to utilize proprietary data. For example, UiPath , a robotics process automation company, is using foundation models in a federated approach, she said. "It's using all of them and then introducing its own specialized models based on its proprietary data to increase the productivity of corporations," Wood said. Twilio is another example. The firm supports the communications platform behind Uber, she said. "It is privy to a trillion consumer business interactions per year, accelerating from here. So it has a lot of proprietary data to help marketers and salespeople understand the best way to target customers," Wood added.