Cathie Wood buys back into Alibaba as stock hits multiyear hig

Cathie Wood just jumped back into Alibaba after four years of silence, right as the stock exploded to its highest point since late 2021.

On Monday, her firm Ark Investment Management bought Alibaba shares through two of its ETFs. The total value? About $16.3 million, according to Ark’s daily trading report.

This isn’t some small blip. On Tuesday, Alibaba’s U.S.-traded ADRs hit levels not seen since November 2021. The stock has nearly doubled in 2025 alone.

Traders are betting hard on its new AI strategy to turn things around, as its main e-commerce business keeps losing ground to rising players like PDD Holdings. Pinduoduo and Temu have been ripping into Alibaba’s market share.

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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