Cathie Wood-led Ark Investment Management has shed all its holdings in Peter Thiel-backed Palantir Technologies Inc (NYSE: PLTR), marking one of the investment firm's swiftest exists from a stock it was bullish on just over a month ago.
Ark Invest on Wednesday sold the remaining five shares it held in Palantir via the Ark Space Exploration & Innovation ETF (BATS: ARKX), daily trade data from the investment firm showed.
For perspective, Ark Invest at the start of February held over 30 million shares, in the data analytics company known for its work with government agencies.
The popular investment firm, known for holding bets in Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) and Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN), shed nearly all of its Palantir exposure in about 13 trades.
Ark Invest had been piling up Palantir stock for months prior to the selloff that began on Feb. 1, when it sold 3.2 million shares in a single trade.
It stepped up liquidating efforts after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings of two cents per share, below analyst expectations, sending its shares down 16%.
“We had some concerns about their (Palantir) competitive positioning within the government space and we had better risk money elsewhere,” Brett Winton, director of Research at Ark Invest, had said in an interview on a YouTube channel earlier this month.
“It's an interesting company .. the technology is super interesting and we're very bullish on AI generally. The marginal competitive weakness on the government side just left us with other places to go.”
Palantir stock closed 5.5% higher at $11.6 a share on Wednesday. The stock is down 37% year-to-date.
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