Cathie Wood wants investors to follow the money AI agents spend

Cathie Wood has a new suggestion for investors trying to read the AI market: stop watching the chatbots and start watching the wallets. The ARK Invest CEO says smart investors should track where autonomous AI agents are spending money. From quick chats to multi-hour shifts According to ARK’s reports, agents went from handling tasks of around 12 minutes in early 2025 to more than 180 minutes by early 2026. ARK credits ongoing innovation, including work from companies like Anthropic, for pushing these capabilities forward. The shift is from short, chat-based exchanges to complex jobs that run independently for hours. ARK’s spending forecast is where the numbers get large. The firm projects AI-driven software spending could reach between $3 trillion and $7 trillion. ARK’s analysts frame that as potential growth of 19% to 56% in AI-driven software expenditures. ARK expects both enterprises and consumers to drive that growth as they adopt persistent agent technology. The end of the subscription era, maybe Wood’s commentary on September 30, 2026, pointed to a possible change in how AI companies make money. She highlighted OpenAI’s move toward what she described as headless agents-as-a-se...