Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest bought approximately $37.4 million worth of shares in Jack Dorsey’s payments company Block Inc. on a single trading day, spreading the position across three of its actively managed exchange-traded funds.
The Breakdown by Fund
Ark purchased a total of 456,059 Block shares, which trade under the ticker XYZ, according to a trading notification issued by the firm. The flagship ARK Innovation ETF took 191,732 shares worth approximately $15.7 million, the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF added 176,262 shares worth about $14.5 million, and the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF acquired 88,065 shares valued at roughly $7.2 million.
Block shares closed down 3.23% on Monday at $80.20 per share.
What Block Does
Dorsey co-founded Block in 2009 under the original name Square Inc. The company operates the Square merchant platform, the Bitcoin and financial services app Cash App, and develops Bitcoin mining hardware. Dorsey has been a long-time public advocate for Bitcoin.
Strong Earnings Preceded the Purchase
The Ark buy followed Block’s second-quarter earnings report. Block posted $3.17 billion in gross profit for the quarter, a 25% increase from the same period a year earlier. The company also raised its full-year 2026 gross-profit forecast to $12.51 billion, which would represent 21% annual growth, according to Block’s shareholder letter filed with the SEC.
Block reported $447 million in operating income for the quarter and $864 million in adjusted operating income. The company credited artificial intelligence tools with helping write and review nearly all of its production code changes in June.
Those earnings followed a significant February restructuring that cut Block’s workforce by more than 40%, reducing headcount from over 10,000 employees to fewer than 6,000. Gross profit rose a quarter year on year with roughly half the staff, which is what the company’s AI claim looks like in the numbers.
Circle Position Also Added
On the same day, Ark’s fintech fund bought 35,192 shares of Circle Internet Group, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, for a stake worth approximately $3.36 million. Circle shares closed Monday at $95.55, up 9.65% on the day.
Ark also sold shares in Palantir, Shopify, Roblox, AMD, and Tempus AI on the same trading day, though the firm did not indicate whether those sales financed the Block or Circle purchases.
