(Bloomberg) -- Cathie Wood is a lot of things to a lot of people in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Her Ark Investment Management is the lead tenant on a state-of-the-art startup incubator. She’s partnered with the local school district on a science and technology curriculum. And she’s become a recognizable face in a town without much of a Wall Street presence, including among fans who seem unperturbed by — perhaps unaware of — the rocky performance of her flagship fund.
On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Wood had just finished the keynote speech for an artificial intelligence summit at the newly opened Ark Innovation Center, when a woman approached to ask for a job for her son.
“I just love you, you’re the whole reason I’m here,” the woman said.
Wood gave her a hug and told her to pass along her son’s information to one of the Ark employees. In St. Petersburg, far from her critics on Wall Street, this type of thing happens with some frequency.
An exterior view of the Ark Innovation Center in St. Petersburg, Florida. Photographer: Octavio Jones/Bloomberg
It’s been more than two years since Wood, who the Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates has a net worth of roughly $220 million, joined the stampede of New York money managers and finance firms heading south for lower taxes and better weather. But unlike Ken Griffin, Jeff Bezos, Stephen Ross and other billionaires who are reshaping Miami and Palm Beach with charitable donations, real estate purchases and development projects, she set up shop in a decidedly less glamorous city on the state’s West Coast.
In St. Petersburg, a city of about 250,000 with a sleepy downtown that is often overshadowed by neighboring Tampa, Wood found a place where she could quickly make a mark. She got the naming rights on the startup incubator, known as Ark Innovation Center, as part of a $2 million investment in the project. And the curriculum she and her team developed is being taught to sixth graders across Pinellas County, with plans to have it in seventh and eighth grade classrooms within two years. Lessons include designing glow-in-the-dark food and using drones to understand storms.
“We felt we could make a difference here,” Wood said. “The community has welcomed us with open arms.”
Cathie Wood during an interview at the Ark Innovation Center. Photographer: Octavio Joes/Bloomberg
Bringing in Wood’s Ark was a big deal for St. Petersburg, which is best known in the financial world as the longtime home of Raymond James Financial (its name adorns the stadium across the water where the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers play), and some other back office jobs.
The city is more famous for its beaches and sunshine, things that Wood acknowledged she needed during the 2022 stock market meltdown. When her flagship fund was plunging, she said she found solace walking by the pier blocks from her downtown office. Filled with the tech bets that made her an investing star, ARKK closed that year at $31.24, down 75% since the end of 2020.
Wood launched her firm in 2014 with a key capital infusion from Archegos Capital Management founder Bill Hwang. She became a lighting rod for criticism after her fund, buoyed by bold bets on Bitcoin and Tesla, surged in the pandemic, generating a slew of media coverage that touted her stock-picking prowess. But when the laws of gravity intervened, Wall Street investors and executives relished the comeuppance, with Dan Loeb, Cliff Asness and Rich Handler taking swipes at her strategy.
ARKK rebounded last year, along with the broader market, but there have been missteps. Wood cut out Nvidia Corp. in January 2023, just as the chipmaker was starting a massive rally that has sent its share price up nearly 500%. And in February, Morningstar named her funds as the worst “wealth destroyer” in the past decade. Investors have taken notice, pulling roughly $1 billion so far this year from ARKK, which counts slumping Tesla among its largest holdings.
But keeping score in that way is not top of mind in St. Petersburg. Once Wood settled on relocating to Florida, she pondered Miami but was turned off by the “New York South” vibes and said it was too crowded. She also looked at Tampa, which is Florida’s third largest city. Ultimately, she ended up across the bay, where she bought a waterfront condo not far from downtown for $2.15 million in 2021. (By comparison, Griffin paid $107 million for a mansion in Miami’s Coconut Grove and Bezos bought two properties in the “Billionaire Bunker” of Indian Creek for a combined $147 million.)
The next project for Wood’s Innovation Foundation, which helped developed the science curriculum that is expanding across Pinellas County, is working with the school board to create another Ark center to provide education. It’s modeled after the Enterprise Village, a learning center in the area where middle schoolers pretend to be business owners at a shopping mall as a way to learn economics.
Laura Hine, chair of the Pinellas County School Board, said she appreciated that Wood was open to working with the local public schools.
“She could build her own school and that would help a couple hundred kids,” Hine said. “By choosing to partner with our public school system, she’s affecting 95,000 students.”
Of Ark’s roughly 50 employees, 33 are currently working in St. Petersburg, while the others are remote. Wood is a proponent of in-office work, especially for younger people — “or else they'll never be inculcated in our culture, their DNA won’t evolve” — and said all new hires need be at the office. The firm is looking to recruit from the local community, but the primary focus is on getting the best people “as long as they are willing to move,” she said.
The Tampa area has added jobs in banking and financial services in recent years. And while St. Petersburg lacks the amenities and nightlife of many bigger cities, it appears to be on the upswing. For one, Mayor Ken Welch said it’s a rare place in the US that actually needs more office space. There’s a flurry of construction downtown, with plans for new skyscrapers and a $6.5 billion development that includes a new baseball stadium for the low-spending but overperforming Tampa Bay Rays.
“In a community like this that is hungry and has the ingredients as well, we think it’s possible to put our stamp on the place and attract attention and capital,” said Tom Staudt, Ark’s chief operating officer. “New York is an amazing place, but there’s a lot of people and a lot of money, so making a meaningful impact on a community is more difficult.”
To contact the author of this story:
Claire Ballentine in New York at [email protected]