Cathie Wood buys $14 million of megacap AI stocks

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Cathie Wood didn’t hesitate when tech investors started flinching.

On Feb. 17, ARK’s daily disclosures showed buys of $8 million in Broadcom (AVGO) and about $6 million in Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). That’s a massive $14 million combined push into two of the biggest AI infrastructure giants, just days after a steep risk-off stretch rattling the broader market.

The buy-the-dip moment from Wood comes at a time when confidence in AI is wobbling.

The S&P 500 is down 2% over the past couple of weeks, Barron’s reports. Moreover, the Nasdaq has shed roughly 4% in February alone, leaving it more than 6% off recent highs. Clearly, tech investors are in ‘show-me’ mode with the AI trade, questioning whether the AI boom is running ahead of visible returns.

However, that hasn’t deterred the relentless AI-related spending.

The “Big 4” hyperscalers in Microsoft — Google-parent Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta — are forecasted to dish out nearly $650 billion into AI-related infrastructure in 2026, up a massive 60% year over year, according to Yahoo Finance.

Wood is betting that the market is mispricing the middle of that equation.

Broadcom remains a dominant force in the custom AI silicon for hyperscalers. On the other hand, AMD has emerged as a credible alternative in high-performance computing, going all-in with a full-stack approach through Helios.

So if AI demand remains durable and unit economics improve over time, things could get a lot more lucrative for infrastructure suppliers, and they could be the first names investors re-rate.

Cathie Wood bought Broadcom and AMD amid renewed volatility in AI stocks.Photo by Bloomberg on Getty Images · Photo by Bloomberg on Getty Images

Buys

Broadcom: Bought 24,205 shares for $8.05 million.
Advanced Micro Devices: Bought 30,139 shares for $6.12 million.
Coinbase: Bought 41,453 shares for $6.88 million.

Sells/trims

Teradyne: Sold 43,586 shares for $13.32 million (largest trade of the day).
Twist Bioscience: Sold 119,374 shares for $6.31 million.
Airbnb: Trimmed.
Pinterest: Trimmed.

Nvidia and other flashy AI chip giants usually hog the spotlight, but Broadcom has quietly positioned itself as perhaps the go-to player in the picks-and-shovels role across the critical parts of AI hyperscalers.

Broadcom is developing AI ASICs and XPU chips for big-ticker customers like Google and Meta.

Moreover, that tremendous demand is backed by its mighty impressive fundamentals.

Fund manager buys and sells

For perspective, Broadcom recently highlighted a $73 billion backlog over the next 18 months, which is concentrated in the hands of a few hyperscalers. Also, it has guided AI sales to nearly double to $8.2 billion in a single quarter.

As we look ahead, AI will likely shift from just training to always-on inference workloads, making efficiency much more important.

As a result, custom chips become a lot more pertinent, and Broadcom becomes even more embedded in that relentless transition, including through Google’s TPU ecosystem.

On top of that, another underappreciated lever where Broadcom dominates is networking.

As AI clusters scale up, switching and interconnects become key bottlenecks, and Broadcom spearheads the high-performance Ethernet switching space.

Moreover, there’s VMware to consider, where the enterprise software tilt, particularly toward subscriptions, lays the foundation for fatter margins and improved earnings quality. At present, Broadcom is generating a 77% gross margin, higher than its five-year average of 75%.

6-month return:AVGO +8.95% versus AMD +14.40%
9-month return:AVGO +46.33% versus AMD +73.32%
YTD return:AVGO -3.92% versus AMD -5.17%
1-year return:AVGO +43.99% versus AMD +79.56%
3-year return:AVGO +483.97% versus AMD +158.70%
5-year return: AVGO +666.15% versus AMD +125.79%
Source: Seeking Alpha

AMD’s 2026 story has everything to do with its scaling as an alternative in data-center AI.

Unlike the vagueness among AI players, the catalysts in play for AMD are a lot more specific.

Firstly, AMD has effectively positioned itself as a preferred partner to OpenAI, with the first 1-gigawatt deployment of Instinct MI450 GPUs expected in the second half of 2026.

On top of that, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has outlined plans for a gigantic AI supercluster purpose-built on AMD’s Helios rack design, starting off with 50,000 GPUs in Q3 2026.

In addition, product cadence reinforces that superb narrative.

The MI355 is expected to ramp up first half of 2026, with MI450 coming online in the back half. Moreover, AMD’s setup looks a lot more attractive and durable because it isn’t AI-only.

The tech giant’s x86 share has risen to nearly 29%, Tom’s Hardware reports, while desktop share has surged over 36%. Its Turin server CPUs represent more than half of server revenue.

ARK Innovation (ARKK): +35.49% versus SPY: +17.72% (+17.77 pts)
ARK Next Gen Internet: +38.93% versus SPY: +17.72% (+21.21 pts)
ARK Genomic Revolution: +23.04% versus SPY: +17.72% (+5.32 pts)
ARK Fintech Innovation: +28.67% versus SPY: +17.72% (+10.95 pts)
ARK Autonomous Tech & Robotics: +48.81% versus SPY: +17.72% (+31.09 pts)
Source: Yahoo Finance, Total Real Returns

This story was originally published by TheStreet on Feb 18, 2026, where it first appeared in the Investing section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.