Cathie Wood’s Bold Move: Buying Back Into Alibaba as Stock Hits Multi-Year High

Cathie Wood just made a power play that's turning heads across Wall Street.

ARK Invest's flagship funds are loading up on Alibaba shares again—right as the Chinese e-commerce giant hits price levels not seen in years.

The Strategic Shift

Wood's team is doubling down on Chinese tech despite regulatory headwinds. They're betting big on Alibaba's cloud computing division and international expansion potential.

Market Timing Masterstroke?

This buyback comes precisely as Alibaba stock breaks through technical resistance levels. Some analysts call it brilliant timing—others see it as chasing momentum.

Wood's track record with disruptive tech makes this move particularly noteworthy. She's previously nailed calls on Tesla and Bitcoin before they went parabolic.

Of course, Wall Street analysts are already debating whether this is genius positioning or just another fund manager following the herd—because nothing says 'alpha' like buying what everyone else is suddenly talking about.

Ark ramps up China tech positions again

Cathie first jumped into Alibaba in 2014, right after the company’s IPO. SEC records show steady involvement, until everything stopped cold in September 2021. That’s when Beijing’s regulatory crackdown hit Chinese internet firms hard. After that, there was no trace of Ark voting or trading activity tied to Alibaba. The silence lasted four years.

But Monday’s buy looks like a full re-entry. It’s also not isolated. Ark also bought more shares of Baidu on the same day, pushing that position up to $47 million, according to the filings. That MOVE follows earlier 2025 purchases in Baidu, making it clear Ark’s betting again on China’s tech sector.

Ark still holds smaller stakes in other China-related names: BYD, Pony AI, and JD Logistics. Those are there, but tiny compared to Alibaba and Baidu.

Cathie’s been famous for going after future tech bets. Her main fund, ARKK, is up 49% this year, beating both the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500. But zoom out, and it’s still down over the last five years. And while 2025 has been hot, the fund’s bled out $438 million in investor cash so far this year, based on Bloomberg data.

This latest Alibaba move could be Cathie trying to pivot back into sectors she’d avoided since China’s tech meltdown. It also ties into her wider strategy of stacking up AI-focused bets, just as Wall Street’s obsession with artificial intelligence reaches fever pitch. And with Alibaba shifting its focus away from just e-commerce and deeper into machine learning, it fits her pattern.

“AI is the next big wave of innovation,” Cathie’s team wrote in a recent update. “Companies leading in this space could see exponential growth.”

She’s not alone in that thinking, but her timing is bold. Everyone’s watching to see if this $16.3 million buy-in is the start of a full comeback for Ark’s China exposure—or just a trade. Either way, Alibaba is back in her portfolio.

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