Cathie Wooden’s love affair with Tesla is not any secret.
The EV big stays the highest weight (over 13%) within the ARK Make investments’s mixed portfolio, valued north of $180 million.
Wooden has stated on a number of events that if she needed to personal only one inventory, it could be Tesla. Additionally, ARK assigns a base-case worth goal of a lofty $2,600 on Tesla by 2029, constructed round its conviction that Robotaxis and AI will drive the majority of Tesla’s future worth.
In ARK’s newest modeling, Robotaxis characterize almost 90% of Tesla’s enterprise worth by 2029.
Nonetheless, the backdrop continues getting trickier for Tesla’s core EV enterprise. Deliveries just lately hit a document 497,000 in Q3 2025, however progress has largely been uneven, and margins stay below strain following a number of worth cuts.
In China, which is the world’s best EV market, gross sales stay largely uneven as native rivals proceed to push on pricing, tech, and design.
Then there’s BYD (BYDDY), the Chinese language automaker as soon as backed by Warren Buffett, which continues topping Tesla at its personal sport.
It has notched up a number of quarters the place it has surged previous Tesla on pure battery-electric deliveries, an indication of its rising international scale. That stage of quantity compels traders to rethink assumptions about pricing energy and market share domestically.
That brings us again to Wooden.
She nonetheless views Tesla as a stable platform play, spearheaded by AI, autonomy, and vitality, with optionality far past automobiles.
But an Oct. 21 disclosure revealed Wooden’s quiet transfer, which hints at how she’s handicapping China’s EV surge, and the one rival she believes Elon Musk can’t ignore.
Again-to-back buys present Wooden boosting her publicity to BYD as China’s EV market surges.
Ratcliffe/Bloomberg through Getty Pictures
Cathie Wooden retains shopping for BYD as China’s EV demand accelerates
Cathie Wooden’s ARK Make investments isn’t wanting previous China’s large EV increase.
In back-to-back trades, ARK’s Autonomous Know-how & Robotics ETF (ARKQ) added to its place in BYD (BYDDY), sometimes called the “Tesla killer.”
Within the newest disclosure dated Oct. 21, ARKQ scooped up 55,523 shares of BYD value roughly $757,888. That adopted a 69,000-share buy the day earlier than valued at $941,160, taking the whole two-day funding to almost $1.7 million.
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The transfer factors to a gradual and rising curiosity from Wooden’s staff, with optimism constructing round China’s EV restoration, together with BYD’s increasing export footprint.
BYD has been largely charting an aggressive progress path, outpacing international friends with a pointy bounce in hybrid and battery-electric gross sales. But its shares just lately took a success following the corporate’s largest-ever recall, masking greater than 115,000 autos, for design and questions of safety.
Her timing means that Wooden might probably be trying to purchase the dip, underscoring confidence in BYD’s long-term fundamentals.
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Wooden isn’t a long-time BYD “super-bull.”
ARK trimmed China publicity between 2021 and 2023, warning the market on the time was dealing with “a day of reckoning.”
Nonetheless, she did voice her admiration for BYD’s execution, calling its automobiles “fabulous… fit, finish, design” whereas insisting that Tesla stays much more aggressive by way of vary and efficiency.
As of Oct. 21, 2025, BYD represents almost 1.06% of ARK’s mixed portfolio, over a $14.5 million place, which is middle-tier by fund weight.
Fast takeaways:
- Cathie Wooden’s ARKQ fund scooped up over 124,000 BYD shares previously couple of days, including about $1.7 million in recent publicity.
- BYD now makes up roughly 1.06% of ARK’s mixed portfolio, valued at $14.5 million.
- Wooden admires BYD’s design and execution however nonetheless calls Tesla the stronger long-term play, with a higher concentrate on autonomy and margins.
BYD widens lead over Tesla in pure EV deliveries
BYD isn’t taking part in second fiddle to Tesla anymore; it’s successfully setting the tempo. The Chinese language automaker outperforms Tesla by way of deliveries, persevering with to develop its international quantity lead.
In This autumn 2023, BYD’s 526,409 BEV deliveries beat Tesla’s 484,507, which marked the primary time a Chinese language model took the worldwide crown. A 12 months later, the margin expanded even additional as BYD bought near 595,000 BEVs in opposition to Tesla’s 496,000.
That consistency exhibits that BYD’s immense scale isn’t a one-off story.
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The month-to-month numbers proceed to again it up.
In August, BYD’s passenger BEV gross sales surged 34.4% 12 months over 12 months to 199,585 models, whereas plug-in hybrids dropped 22.7%.
In September, BEV gross sales rose once more, up 24.3% year-over-year to 205,050, crossing the 200,000 mark for a second consecutive month. Abroad shipments stayed remarkably sturdy at 71,256, up triple digits from final 12 months.
All this performs out in opposition to a Chinese language EV market that continues to impress, with new-energy automobile (NEV) penetration reaching 58% in September and wholesale volumes growing to 1.5 million, up 22% 12 months over 12 months.
Regardless of the worth wars, China’s NEV gross sales are up 32% 12 months so far, displaying that demand hasn’t cooled.
Furthermore, BYD’s scale story goes international. It’s constructing vegetation in Hungary and Turkey, growing manufacturing in Thailand, and assembling kits in Brazil.
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