Cathie Wood Just Bought the Baidu (BIDU) Dip — Here’s Why She’s Betting on Chinese AI

TLDR

• ARK Invest bought 97,597 shares of Baidu (BIDU) for $12.21 million, using a 5.7% post-earnings dip as a buying opportunity
• Baidu beat Q4 profit and sales expectations but reported a 4% year-over-year revenue drop due to weak advertising
• ARK sold 25,175 shares of BWX Technologies (BWXT) for $5.22 million, continuing to reduce that position
• ARK also sold PagerDuty (PD), Beam Therapeutics (BEAM), Iridium (IRDM), Salesforce (CRM), and Butterfly Network (BFLY)
• Baidu’s AI-driven businesses generated $1.61 billion in Q4, representing 43% of total revenue

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest made a big move on Thursday, February 26, buying into Chinese tech company Baidu after its stock dropped sharply.

ARK purchased 97,597 shares of Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) across its ARKK, ARKQ, and ARKW funds. The total spend came to $12.21 million.

Baidu, Inc., BIDU

The buy came after Baidu shares fell 5.7% following its Q4 FY2025 earnings report. The company beat both sales and profit expectations, but investors reacted to a 4% year-over-year drop in total revenue.

The revenue decline was driven by weakness in Baidu’s core advertising business, which has been under pressure. That drop offset gains elsewhere in the company.

ARK appears to be looking past the ad slowdown. CEO Robin Li pointed to strong growth in AI cloud infrastructure and growing enterprise demand for Baidu’s AI products.

In Q4, Baidu’s AI-powered businesses — including cloud infrastructure, AI apps, and robotaxis — brought in $1.61 billion. That was 43% of total revenue for the quarter.

ARK Trims BWX Technologies and PagerDuty

On the sell side, ARK’s largest trade was the sale of 25,175 shares of nuclear components firm BWX Technologies (NYSE: BWXT) for $5.22 million. This continues a pattern of ARK reducing its BWXT position seen earlier in the week.

ARK also sold 307,843 shares of cloud software company PagerDuty (NYSE: PD) for roughly $2.18 million. PD stock was actually up 5% on the day of the sale.

The PagerDuty sale aligns with ARK’s steady reduction of exposure to that stock over recent weeks.

Other sell trades included Beam Therapeutics (NASDAQ: BEAM), Iridium Communications (NASDAQ: IRDM), Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), Pinterest (NYSE: PINS), and Butterfly Network (NYSE: BFLY).

Biotech Buys and Other Moves

ARK also bought 482,407 shares of biotech firm ATAI Life Sciences (NASDAQ: ATAI) for roughly $1.79 million through its ARKG fund.

ATAI shares had fallen 14.1% the same day, even after the company released positive Phase IIa trial data for its compound EMP-01, targeting social anxiety disorder.

Analysts noted the results were scientifically encouraging but not strong enough to justify ATAI’s prior run-up in price.

ARK also picked up 4,836 shares of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) for $814,966 and 25,382 shares of Pure Storage (NYSE: PSTG) for $1.87 million.

On TipRanks, BIDU currently holds a Strong Buy consensus rating based on seven Buy and two Hold ratings. The average price target of $180.63 implies 44.3% upside from current levels.

BIDU shares have gained 41.8% over the past year.

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