Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest Buys $240 Million in OpenAI Stock Across Three ETFs Before IPO

TLDR

• ARK Invest bought roughly $240 million in OpenAI Group shares across three ETFs on March 31, 2026
• OpenAI raised $122 billion in its largest-ever funding round the same day, valuing the company at $852 billion
• ARK also bought shares in CoreWeave and DoorDash, adding to positions in both companies
• ARK sold over 600,000 shares of Strata Critical Medical and trimmed its Veracyte and Teradyne positions
• The OpenAI purchase gives retail ETF investors indirect access to a private company for the first time via ARK’s public funds

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest made one of its biggest single-day moves on March 31, 2026, buying roughly $240 million worth of OpenAI Group stock across three of its exchange-traded funds.

The purchase spread across the ARK Innovation ETF, the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF, and the ARK Blockchain and Fintech Innovation ETF. Each fund now holds roughly a 3% stake in OpenAI Group PBC, Series C.

Before this move, only ARK’s closed-end Venture Fund held OpenAI shares. That fund first bought in during 2024 and added a $250 million investment in October of that year.

The timing of ARK’s move lines up with a major funding announcement from OpenAI. On the same day, OpenAI closed its largest-ever funding round at $122 billion, pushing its valuation to $852 billion.

OpenAI said the money will go toward chips, data centers, and hiring. The company also sold about $3 billion in shares directly to individual investors through a private placement involving three major banks.

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said the company wants to give retail investors access not just to its technology, but to the financial upside that comes with it.

What the OpenAI ETF Move Means for Retail Investors

By putting OpenAI shares into publicly traded ETFs, ARK is giving everyday investors a way to buy exposure to a private company. This is unusual. Most retail investors cannot access private company shares before an IPO.

The trade-off is pricing. ETFs trade all day on the open market, but private company shares do not have a real-time price. Fund managers rely on estimates to value those holdings, and they may need to sell liquid assets to handle investor redemptions.

Cathie Wood commented on the move, saying that in the world of fintech, agentic AI is going to create some amazing opportunities.

ARK’s Other Buys and Sells on March 31

Beyond OpenAI, ARK bought 26,515 shares of CoreWeave, a cloud infrastructure company, for about $2.05 million. CoreWeave shares rose 12% that day.

ARK also added 14,729 shares of DoorDash for $2.21 million. This followed a DoorDash purchase the day before, building on ARK’s position in the food delivery sector.

On the sell side, ARK offloaded 612,483 shares of Strata Critical Medical for $2.56 million. The company provides urgent logistics and medical services to healthcare providers in the US.

ARK also sold 6,204 shares of Teradyne for $1.84 million and 115,718 shares of Veracyte across its ARKK and ARKG ETFs, totaling $3.52 million. ARK had been reducing its Veracyte position over the previous week.

The OpenAI funding round closed at $852 billion valuation on March 31, 2026, the same day ARK made its $240 million purchase across its three flagship ETFs.

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