Cathie Wood Sold Palantir and AMD at Their Most Crowded Moment—Then Bought a 31% Loser

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(SeaPRwire) –   By: Oliver Hawthorne

Cathie Wood is not abandoning artificial intelligence. She is abandoning crowded certainty. The latest ARK Innovation ETF update shows sales of Palantir and AMD. The cash did not sit still. It moved into Archer Aviation. On its face, that looks like a contradiction. Palantir sells AI data software. AMD sells AI chips. Archer makes electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. Most portfolio managers would call Palantir and AMD the safer side of tech. Wood treated them as funding sources. That is the anxiety hiding inside this filing. It is not about Palantir’s government contracts or AMD’s data center pipelines. It is about what price already captures those stories. Palantir ranks eleventh in the fund. AMD ranks twelfth. The sales were trims, not exits. But the proceeds went to a stock down roughly 31% this year and trading near $5.26. That is not a value trade. That is a statement.

The raw portfolio facts are less ambiguous than the commentary around them. ARK sold shares of Palantir and AMD in its latest update. The flagship ARK Innovation ETF bought about $3.35 million of Archer Aviation stock. Palantir remains the fund’s 11th-largest holding. AMD remains the 12th-largest. ARK has a pattern of trimming positions after large price moves rather than exiting a holding entirely. Palantir has attracted demand for its AI and data software. AMD has benefited from investor interest in AI chips and data center computing. Both remain high-profile positions. The broader fund held about $7.86 billion in assets as of mid-September. It had 46 positions. The ten largest holdings represented just over half of the portfolio. Tesla was the largest at about 9.18%. SpaceX accounted for around 6.32%. Tempus AI followed at 5.87%. Circle represented about 5.16%. Coinbase accounted for roughly 4.63%. Archer ranked around 30th. It represented about 1.2% of the fund. The Boeing agreement is the main driver behind the added exposure. Archer plans to acquire Boeing businesses including Insitu, SkyGrid and Wisk Aero. Boeing will receive a 16.5% ownership stake in Archer as part of the transaction. That is a strategic asset transfer, not a typical supplier deal. ARK also added to CoreWeave on September 17. The firm bought 239,083 shares worth roughly $19.9 million across several ETFs. Most of that purchase went through ARK Innovation.

The commercial loop here is clear. ARK takes profits from AI names that have already rerated. It buys a small eVTOL company receiving Boeing autonomous aviation units. Palantir and AMD still matter. They just no longer carry the same upside per dollar of exposure. Archer, at 1.2% of the portfolio, offers asymmetric exposure to a different kind of AI. The Boeing transaction tilts Archer away from pure air taxi speculation and toward autonomous aircraft systems, aerial navigation, and related defense-adjacent technology. Boeing’s 16.5% stake means the aerospace giant shares the downside. That is the real message. ARK does not need Archer to become Tesla. It needs Boeing’s credibility to keep the company solvent through certification. If Archer succeeds, the cost basis is low. If it fails, the portfolio damage is contained. This is less a bet on eVTOL demand and more a bet that Boeing will not let its newly acquired equity sink. That is the only end-game worth tracking.

Author bio: Oliver Hawthorne, a Principal Correspondent permanently stationed at an international technology review who tracks capital reallocation across AI, semiconductors, and next-generation mobility sectors.