Cathie Wood, the CEO of Ark Invest and nicknamed “Mama Cathie” by her followers, has recently bought into a major tech stock to kick off 2025. Indeed, on January 6, Wood’s ARK Funds bought 39,288 shares of Amazon.com (AMZN). That chunk of stocks was valued at roughly $8.6 million on January 10.
This follows recent Amazon buys for Ark, including 15,301 shares on December 31 and 7,499 shares on December 23. Amazon is emerging as one of the brightest Magnificent-7 stock options in 2025 following a solid year last year. In terms of profitability, AWS outpaces e-commerce as Amazon’s largest segment. In the third quarter, AWS reported $10.7 billion in operating income, compared to $7 billion from the e-commerce business.
Amazon Stock to Push Cathie Wood’s Stock Portfolio out of Slump?
Amazon is not in Ark Innovation ETF’s top 10 holdings as of January 10 but is still a big contributor to the company’s stock profits. Cathie Wood is hoping that the stock investment could help reverse a recent downturn for Ark investments in the past year. Between January 10, 2024, and January 10, 2025, the flagship ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), with $6.7 billion under management including AMZN, returned 16.45%, with an annualized three-year return of -12.11% and a five-year return of just 2.54%. In comparison, the S&P 500 gained 23.51% over the same stretch, with a three-year annualized return of 9.34% and a five-year return of 14.06%.
Also Read: Why Cathie Wood Sold $48 Million of This Tech Stock
For Amazon, two factors in particular could drive AMZN stock ahead this year, according to Jason Brown from The Brown Report. The analyst suggests that Amazon’s AWS and e-commerce growth are the two key catalysts for AMZN stock performance in 2025. “AWS revenue grew 19% to $27.5 billion, and their advertising generated about $14.3 billion, a 19% increase,” Brown said back in November. “If you take AWS and their advertising services together, they’re just shy of $50 billion, which is nearly 50% of North American sales in total. They have another growth engine outside of the eCommerce platform. While dominating eCommerce, this additional growth engine bodes well for the stock.”
According to data from Yahoo Finance, Amazon is eyeing an 82% increase in earnings this year. That isn’t all, however, as the e-commerce juggernaut is also projecting its mammoth sales to jump another 10.9% over the next twelve months. Those figures have seen three analysts revise earnings estimates upwards over the last 60 days, the report notes.