Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood on 2026 outlook: Expect strong deflationary pressures

Summary

Cathie Wood joins Squawk Box to discuss her 2026 outlook, emphasizing strong deflationary pressures from oil, housing, productivity, and technology. She remains focused on technologically enabled innovation platforms, highlights Tesla's robotaxi-driven margin shift, expects robotaxi adoption to accelerate, and discusses robotics progress. She also gives a bullish valuation view on SpaceX's next round and its data-center-in-space opportunity. Bitcoin and crypto were raised as topics but not developed in the available transcript.

• Cathie Wood sees inflation surprises to the downside due to deflationary pressures.
• Ark focuses on AI, blockchain, robotics, energy storage, and multi-omics sequencing.
• She expects Tesla's robotaxi business to shift margins toward SaaS-like 70-80% levels.
• Robotaxi proliferation may happen faster than analysts expect, aided by possible federal legislation.
• Robotics has private-market excitement; practical robots are progressing, but full humanoid Optimus is much harder.
• She says SpaceX's next round could be around $800B and sees potential to become a trillion-dollar company.
• Bitcoin and crypto were raised but not developed before transcript ended.
• She warns valuations must compress but says markets can still be strong.