Ark Invest is an investment management firm that invests in companies it views as developing disruptive technologies.
Ark and their fund manager, Cathy Wood, became investing superstars in 2020 due to their eye-popping financial returns. But more recently, Ark funds have fallen quite a bit due to the general decline in tech valuations.
Ark releases an annual tech trends report, and the 2022 version - Big Ideas 2022 - was released recently.
The report covers 14 technologies Ark believes will have a transformative impact and generate substantial investment returns by 2030. These are:
- Artificial Intelligence
- Digital Consumer
- Digital Wallets
- Public Blockchains
- Bitcoin
- Ethereum and DeFi
- Web3
- Gene Editing
- Multi-Omics
- Electric Vehicles
- Autonomous Ride-Hail
- Autonomous Logistics
- Printing and Robotics
- Orbital Aerospace
We consider Ark's report must reading for anyone interested in tech trends. But we do have one caveat, which is their forecasts.
The folks at Ark are the ultimate techno-optimists, and their forecasts reflect this.
For example, the report chart below (click to enlarge) shows their forecast for A.I.-related IT spending, which is four times higher than the current consensus forecast.
While we agree the consensus looks low, 4x the consensus is a very aggressive forecast, especially over the next 2-3 years.
We've done some back-of-the-envelope math using their forecasts, and if all the forecasts came true (they won't), we think the result would be the world economy growing at an annual rate in the 8%-9% range over the next decade (it won't).
So we think you should be a bit skeptical while reading their forecasts.
But the Ark folks are very smart.
And they do a great job of describing the technologies they follow and why they're so bullish on them (we're bullish on them too, just not as bullish as Ark).
So despite our view that their forecasts are too optimistic, we still think the report is excellent and well worth reading.
