📅 Oct 01, 2026Finance Deep Dive14 MIN45 VIEWS23 SEGMENTS · 4 SPEAKERS
Cathie Wood believes the next technology revolution could push global economic growth to levels the world has not seen in generations.
The ARK Invest CEO says she expects economic growth to average above 7% over the next 3–5 years, arguing that the combination of AI, robotics, energy storage, blockchain technology and advances in life sciences could create an economic transformation comparable to — or even greater than — the Industrial Revolution.
Wood also explains why she believes inflation could eventually break down, why oil prices could fall dramatically as transportation moves toward t...
What Cathie Wood said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Cathie Wood argued the AI boom is just beginning, drawing lessons from the Industrial Revolution. She cited Brett Winton's research showing global real GDP growth was about 0.6% for 400 years before the Industrial Revolution, then rose to 3%, a five-fold increase. She projects global GDP growth north of 7% over the next three to five years, perhaps rising to 8%, and expects this to look conservative given the breadth of technologies now evolving, including AI, robotics, energy storage, blockchain, and multiomic sequencing. Wood also predicted oil prices could fall to $30-$35 per barrel as transportation moves to the grid, and explained that short-term rates could average 6-8% while long-term rates sit at 5-7%, consistent with historical inverted yield curves. She agreed with Joe Lonsdale that growth will solve debt problems without tax increases, citing past Reaganomics successes.
Key takeaways
Global GDP growth could regularly exceed 7% over the next three to five years, potentially reaching 8%.
Oil prices may sustainably fall to $30-$35 per barrel as transportation electrifies, reducing oil demand.
Short-term rates could average 6-8% and long-term rates 5-7%, with yield curve inversion likely to persist.
Numbers and commitments
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What it refers to
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0.6%
Global real GDP growth before Industrial Revolution
ARK Invest's Cathie Wood wrote a letter to investors earlier this week with a lot of interesting notions. Let's welcome Cathie Wood. I'm not going to read someone's summary; I just want to get right to you. Cathie Wood joins us now in an exclusive interview. Cathie, I'll tell you what my summary is for what you said: the U.S. economy has powered through rising interest rates, inverted yield curves, tariffs, government shutdown, and wars, and it's continued to generate high growth rates. And you continue to see that in the years ahead, with something added in that could rival the Industrial Revolution — basically AI.
Absolutely. And actually, we are informed by the Industrial Revolution. If you look at the 400 years before the Industrial Revolution — Brett Winton, our chief futurist, has done this work — real GDP growth globally was about 0.6%.
And then with the Industrial Revolution, which was the last technology revolution effectively, we moved up to 3% global GDP growth. So that was a five-fold increase. We think that during the next three to five years we will be seeing regularly, and perhaps on average, growth north of 7%.
And that is just a two-and-a-half-fold increase, despite the fact that we have so much more technology evolving today than we did back then. Back then it was electricity, telephone, and the internal combustion engine. Now we've got AI, importantly, robotics, energy storage, blockchain technology, and multiomic sequencing in the life science space. So much more technology moving much faster. So I actually think that 7% is going to look conservative in hindsight.
You've got a lot of other interesting notions. So, we've got the Strait closed, and you know, inflation fears on everyone's lips. You think it's on the verge of breaking down long term. Why?
Yes. I think productivity growth, importantly, is a reason. We also do believe that oil prices are going to go down fairly dramatically because transportation is moving to the grid, and the grid does not use oil. 57% of oil consumption is transportation related. And so we think increasingly as transportation moves to the grid, oil will unwind. And in there we say — and there's a chart showing — whenever we are in a crisis we tend to go down to $30 to $35 oil. We think this won't be a crisis, except perhaps for oil companies and energy-dependent countries. But we think that could happen again, but be sustainable this time around.
During the Industrial Revolution, you had an inverted yield curve that did not cause a recession, and you expect something similar again. Can you explain why short-term rates go up but long-term rates are expected to stay stable? Why does that happen in an economy that you're forecasting like that?
Yes. Again, taking some lessons from the Industrial Revolution: short rates — this was during the 50 years that ended in 1929, before the Depression — short rates averaged the same rate as nominal GDP growth, which was 4.8% back then. Long rates averaged 3.8%. So short rates were taking their cues from nominal growth. Long rates were taking their cues more from really deflation or no inflation back then. And the yield curve was inverted more than 60% of the time on average for about 100 basis points. So we do think we could see nominal GDP growth in the 6 to 8% range. That would be where we would expect short rates to go, and long rates to be 5 to 7%. So from a government yield point of view, we're at the lower end of that range already.
I don't know if you saw Joe Lonsdale the other day. We were talking about $40 trillion of debt, and it's such a daunting number that we don't seem to have any way out. He said not to worry. Everyone wants to raise taxes — do not raise taxes. We're going to get into a disinflationary decade starting in 2030 from AI. The growth is going to be so high that you're not even going to need to raise taxes, and all these things are going to take care of themselves. Did you see him say that, Cathie? Do you agree?
I didn't see him say that, but I agree generally with the notion that we're going to grow out of this. I was very early in my career under Reaganomics, and this was the same argument, debate taking place back then. And of course, growth did take care of the problem back then, and I do believe it's going to take care of the problem again. You know, it's interesting — I think many people are going to start competing for that growth number. We're in the 7 to 8% range, and I've seen Elon Musk — I think he's in the 20% plus range for real GDP growth. But I do agree that the surprise here is going to be how rapid the growth is going to be, and we're seeing it already from the AI companies. They're astounding, astounding growth rates.
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Wood, C. (2026, October 1). Cathie Wood: The AI Boom Is Just Getting Started [Interview transcript]. Finance Deep Dive. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2964324/
MLA
Cathie Wood. "Cathie Wood: The AI Boom Is Just Getting Started." Finance Deep Dive, 1 Oct. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2964324/.
BibTeX
@misc{wood2026_2964324,
author = {Cathie Wood},
title = {Cathie Wood: The AI Boom Is Just Getting Started},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Finance Deep Dive. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {oct},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2964324/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
