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- Cathie Wood is making a bet on the embattled cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
- CrowdStrike’s faulty update for Windows computers caused a massive global tech outage on Friday.
- But that hasn’t stopped Wood from buying nearly $12 million of CrowdStrike stock.
CrowdStrike came under fire after an update triggered last week’s massive global tech outage, but Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood seems to have identified an investment opportunity amidst the mayhem.
According to a Barron’s story published Monday, two of Wood’s exchange-traded funds purchased nearly $12 million of CrowdStrike stock on Friday, the day the tech debacle occurred.
The ensuing outage, caused by a faulty Windows update from CrowdStrike, disrupted operations at major banks, airlines, retailers, and other industries.
The cybersecurity firm’s CEO, George Kurtz, said in an X post on Friday that the problem was caused “by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.“
“Today was not a security or cyber incident,” Kurtz wrote in a follow-up X post on the same day. “We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption.”
The incident has caused a dent in the company’s stock price, with CrowdStrike shares falling by 23% since Friday, per Bloomberg.
Ark Invest declined to comment on the trade when it was approached by Barron’s.
This wouldn’t be the first time Wood has made a contrarian bet.
Wood is known to have made some unorthodox investment choices, like her decision to sell off her Nvidia stock earlier this year because she thought it was overvalued.
Wood has since expressed some regret for that ill-timed sale.
“Before selling NVDA in ARKK, had we known that the market was going to reward it and the other Mag 6 stocks to the exclusion of stocks that will be the prime beneficiaries of AI, like TSLA – the largest AI project earth – and multiomics names like RXRX, we would have held it,” Wood wrote in a now-deleted X post on July 14.
Representatives for CrowdStrike and Wood did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
