Cathie Wood Praises Tesla's Robot Army, AI Data: 'Legacy Autos Are Pulling Away'

Ark Invest's Cathie Wood believes Tesla Inc TSLA is the biggest artificial intelligence (AI) player in the world.

What To Know: Tuesday on CNBC's "Squawk Box," Wood stressed the importance of Tesla's access to proprietary data. 

"Five million robots around the world collect data every day and send it back to Tesla," Wood said, referring to the company's vehicles. 

"Tesla has more corner cases, which means disengagements, accidents, information like that, than all of the other companies in the world combined."

AI relies on data and Tesla has a lot of it. Recent breakthroughs in AI are "astounding," Wood said, adding that as AI advances, we get closer and closer to fully autonomous vehicles. 

"Autonomous taxi platforms are the biggest AI project in the world, therefore we think Tesla is the biggest AI player," Wood said. 

Ford and GM have both recently pulled back on their EV strategies, citing profitability concerns. Wood told CNBC that the legacy automakers can't produce EVs and be profitable without scaling.

"As they are pulling away, our market share expectations for Tesla go up," the Ark Invest CEO said. 

As long as Ark's autonomous advantage thesis remains intact, Tesla will remain a top five holding in the firm's flagship fund, Wood said. 

At the time of writing, Tesla was the third-largest holding in Ark's Innovation ETF with an 8.59% weighting. 

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TSLA Price Action: Tesla shares are up approximately 97% since the start of the year. The EV stock was up 3.12% at $244.81 Wednesday afternoon, according to Benzinga Pro.

Photo: courtesy of Tesla.