Rick Munarriz, The Motley Fool

Tue, Jul 1, 2025, 7:15 AM5 min read

• Cathie Wood bought shares of AMD on Monday, adding the semiconductor stock to some of her Ark Invest funds.

• Wood is riding higher this year, as the 24% year-to-date gain for her largest ETF is quadrupling the S&P 500's return.

• AMD isn't growing as quickly as Nvidia, but the rising AI tide is lifting all chips.

• 10 stocks we like better than Advanced Micro Devices ›

Cathie Wood has been particularly busy on the trading floor as the market has rallied. She's adding to some of her positions and pruning others. However, there was only one stock she was buying on the final trading day in June. The CEO, co-founder, and chief investment officer at Ark Invest added more shares of Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) to three of her exchange-traded funds (ETFs). That was the only name on her buy list on Monday.

Wood has hit a few rough patches since the blowout 2020 performance that put her family of aggressive growth ETFs on the map. She's in a good groove right now. Ark Innovation ETF (NYSEMKT: ARKK) -- her largest fund and one of the recipients of fresh AMD shares -- closed out the first half of the year with a 24% gain. That's more than quadruple the S&P 500's (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) comparable 6% return through the first six months of 2025.

Ark Invest was more active than usual as stock prices rallied through June. Wood pared back to trading in three stocks on Monday, and two of them were partial sells. Let's take a closer look at the lone buy, AMD.

Ark Invest has been building up its stake in AMD in recent weeks. Wood is buying the maker of microprocessors and graphics processing units (GPUs) on the way up. Shares are lower than they were a year ago, but they've moved 17% higher in 2025, nearly tripling the market's return. AMD has been particularly buoyant lately, soaring 86% since bottoming out in early April.

If AMD has nearly doubled in the past three months, only to climb just 17% over the past six months, you can imagine the big hole it has had to claw its way out of this year. AMD was a latecomer to the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. Its revenue declined 4% in 2023. AI chip leader Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) saw its business more than double in its comparable fiscal year.

AMD has been gaining momentum on the data center outfitter bandwagon. Since the fiscal second quarter of 2023, when revenue clocked in with an 18% year-over-year slide, AMD's top-line growth has accelerated in all but one of seven subsequent quarters. The turnaround has culminated in a 36% jump in its latest quarter. It even hosted a well-received AI event last month, collecting several bullish analyst notes in the process.