Cathie Wood, chief executive and chief investment officer of ARK Invest, said global economic growth could reach an annual rate of 7.3% by 2030 as innovative technologies including artificial intelligence converge. Falling costs from technological advances will ease inflationary pressure, while expanding capital expenditure and productivity gains drive economic growth, she said.
Hanwha Asset Management said on the 16th that it hosted "PLUS Coach Talk with Cathie Wood" on the 15th at Centre Pompidou x Hanwha in the 63 Building in Seoul's Yeouido district. The event, part of a client and investor communication program under PLUS, a joint brand of Hanwha's financial units, drew major domestic institutional and professional investors as well as financial industry officials.
In a lecture titled "Seizing the Opportunity of Change: Innovation Opens a New Golden Age of Investing," Wood pointed to five innovation platforms: AI, public blockchains, robotics, energy storage and multiomics sequencing. "The five innovation platforms are converging with one another and crossing technological tipping points," she said. "Driven by capital expenditure expansion and productivity improvements from disruptive innovation, global real GDP growth could reach an annual rate of 7.3% by 2030." That is far above the 3.1% projection from the International Monetary Fund that Wood cited.
She also said investment opportunities will widen as AI reshapes the structure of the software and professional services markets. Wood cited cases of generative AI platforms and AI-native startups posting annualized revenue growth of more than 1,000%. In autonomous driving, she pointed to Waymo's expanding robotaxi share and the driving data accumulated by Tesla's Full Self-Driving system. Backed by advances in computing capacity and AI technology, she expects commercialization of Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus to come into view around 2028.
The reach of innovative technology will also extend into space infrastructure and biotechnology, she said. SpaceX's reusable rockets are lowering the cost of orbital transport, she explained, making space-based AI computing a possible alternative that could ease the power and space constraints facing ground-based data centers. In bio and healthcare, she projected that combining multiomics with AI will accelerate gene editing and the development of precision therapeutics.
On timing, Wood emphasized opportunities at the pre-listing stage. "As the pace of innovation accelerates, promising companies are creating considerable value at the private stage before an initial public offering," she said. "Investors also need to read this shift and pay attention to opportunities in the early innovation ecosystem."
Hanwha Asset Management said it plans to work with ARK Invest to offer investment solutions that connect global innovative technologies with investment opportunities in South Korea's strategic industries. "ARK's forward-looking technological insight combined with Hanwha's capacity to turn that into reality can generate greater synergy," said Choi Young-jin, executive vice president at Hanwha Asset Management. "By combining our global network with investment insight, we will walk alongside clients as an investment partner they can trust."