Cathie Wood's Ark Invest executed a series of major trades on August 17, buying heavily into Nvidia (NVDA) while cutting its positions in Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Palantir Technologies. The moves landed in public view almost immediately, since Ark discloses its ETF holdings and trades every trading day, a transparency practice that has made the firm's daily positioning a closely followed data point for retail investors.

Ark purchased 101,356 Nvidia shares through its ARKK ETF alone, at a closing price of $225.01, which values that single purchase at roughly $22.8 million. The firm also bought Nvidia shares across its ARKF, ARKQ, ARKW, and ARKX funds.

Nvidia Buy Comes Amid AI Infrastructure Expansion

The purchases come as Nvidia expands its AI infrastructure push. The company secured 4.25 gigawatts of data center capacity in Ohio for OpenAI, a site that could support between $150 billion and $200 billion in Nvidia revenue per system generation.

Reports also suggest Nvidia and OpenAI are restructuring their financing deal. Under the reported changes, Nvidia's potential guarantee could drop from $250 billion to under $120 billion, while OpenAI's total computing commitments through 2030 could represent around $600 billion in Nvidia systems.

The buy also marks a notable step for Ark given its history with the stock: the firm sharply reduced its Nvidia stake in early 2023, shortly before the chipmaker's AI-driven surge, and the position has since remained a comparatively small part of its portfolios.

Ark Trims AMD Despite Strong Growth Numbers

On the same day it was buying Nvidia, Ark sold 25,917 AMD shares worth approximately $13.1 million across its ARKF, ARKQ, ARKW, and ARKX ETFs.

AMD has had a strong year. The stock is up 136% year-to-date and gained 7% over just the past five days. In Q2, AMD's data center revenue jumped 107% year over year. CEO Lisa Su said server revenue could grow more than 80% year over year in the second half of fiscal year 2026, and the company expects data center sales to more than double in 2027.

The rotation matters because AMD's Instinct MI-series accelerators, including the MI450 cited by analysts, compete directly with Nvidia's data center GPUs, so Ark's same-day trades landed on the two chief rivals in AI compute.

Despite Wood's sale, Wall Street is not backing away from AMD. Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya maintains a Buy rating and a $620 price target, calling AMD the best-positioned CPU vendor on the market.

Phillip Securities analyst Yik Ban Chong is more bullish, with a $755 price target. He expects Anthropic to deploy 2 gigawatts of AMD's MI450 GPUs starting next year, potentially adding $30 billion to AMD's revenue.

AMD holds a Strong Buy consensus from 26 analysts, with an average price target of $651.32, about 28% above current levels.

Palantir Position Also Reduced

Ark also sold 22,023 Palantir shares through its ARKF ETF. At Palantir's closing price of $172.55, that sale was worth approximately $3.8 million.

Palantir has focused its AI strategy on building software that works across multiple AI models rather than developing its own, an approach that avoids heavy infrastructure costs while still benefiting from AI growth.

Among other trades on the day, Ark bought shares of Cloudflare and Tempus AI while selling out of its positions in Roblox and Twist Bioscience.

Wood's AMD sale appears to reflect a rebalancing of the portfolio toward Nvidia rather than a negative view of AMD's AI prospects. Because Ark publishes its trades each trading day, subsequent disclosures will show whether the Nvidia buying continues and whether the AMD and Palantir reductions extend into further sessions.

Source: CoinCentral