On the final trading day of 2025, Cathie Wood put an eye-brow raising $1.33 million to work in Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA), scooping up 145,153 shares in the gene-editing play.
For the most part, it has been a forgettable year for Intellia stock, closing out another year in the negative. The stock has tanked 22% year-to-date, while the S&P 500 capped off another superb year in the green, delivering a 17.2% gain.
Nevertheless, the sizable bet on a stumbling biotech stock sends a clear signal on where Wood sees the next long-term breakout.
I’ve covered a ton of Cathie Wood trades over the years, and she’s clearly an anomaly in the investing world.
Not every one of her bets lands on the button, but she consistently leans into ideas long before they feel mainstream.
Genomics, especially gene editing, is arguably one of the biggest investing themes for ARK Invest, an area she has often described as misunderstood and mispriced.
In fact, Wood feels combining AI with advances in gene sequencing and gene-editing tools might spark a medical transformation. At a recent event, she said,
Wood’s has built a powerful reputation over the years for selecting stocks that eventually become massive wealth compounders.
Shortly after launching ARK in 2014, she bet on EV giant Tesla as a top holding well before it went parabolic during the 2020–21 surge.
It also leaned into fintech disruptor Block (then Square) as Cash App scaled, and began scooping up shares in Shopify ahead of its long eCommerce boom.
That said, at the heart of her latest play is gene editing, flipping the script in the medical space.
For the most part, treatments act like crutches, toning down the symptoms instead of fixing the wiring underneath.
Gene editing, though, aims to correct the underlying mutation, potentially delivering a one-time or long-term solution for issues that require lifelong care at this point.
These would include things like certain liver, blood, and rare genetic disorders.
In fact, over time, these tools could potentially reshape cancer treatment by engineering immune cells, substantially improve organ transplantation outcomes, and even target viral DNA or RNA.
From an economic standpoint, curing illnesses like cancer would significantly cut long-term healthcare costs.
For perspective, estimates cited by the NIH/NCI peg the national cost of cancer care at nearly $246 billion by 2030.
Hence, Wood’s bet on Intellia suggests the company is at the center of a gene-editing shift the market still hasn’t priced in yet.
Cathie Wood leans back into gene-editing, adding to a biotech name after a challenging year.
Photo by Bloomberg on Getty Images
ARK trades on December 30
On the final trading day of the year, ARK made multiple targeted moves, pouring into select biotech names while trimming exposure elsewhere.
Buys
- Intellia Therapeutics: 145,153 shares, $1.33 million
- Twist Bioscience: 50,963 shares, $1.67 million
- Beam Therapeutics: 46,376 shares, $1.29 million
- Pacific Biosciences of California: 423,426 shares, $724,000
- Kodiak AI: 10,957 shares, $111,500
Sells / Trims
- Rocket Lab: 1,545 shares sold, $108,000
- Roku: 10,767 shares sold, $1.20 million
- Shopify: 6,579 shares sold, $1.10 million
- Ionis Pharmaceuticals: 12,983 shares sold, $1.03 million
Intellia is trying to fix the disease at the source
Like I laid out earlier, Intellia Therapeutics isn’t looking to simply manage the disease; it’s trying to fix what caused it.
Through CRISPR, a robust gene-editing tool (essentially a GPS-guided molecular scissor), Intellia targets specific DNA errors and corrects them.
Fund manager buys and sells
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The company’s primary focus is on vivo editing, which means therapies are administered directly into the body, which then edit genes inside critical organs such as the liver.
What makes Intellia special is its superb execution.
Consistently delivering gene-editing cargo in a safe manner is tough to say the least, but Intellia has developed a successful modular, manufacturable delivery system and backed it with growing clinical data.
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On top of that, it boasts a key partnership with healthcare giant Regeneron that adds funding, discovery, and development muscle.
How Intellia stacks up against other gene-editing players
- CRISPR Therapeutics: its key focus is on ex vivo therapies, where cells are basically edited outside the body. Importantly, its CRISPR-based treatment Casgevy is already green-lit by regulators.
- Beam Therapeutics: specializes in base editing, switching up a DNA letter instead of cutting the DNA strand completely.
- Prime Medicine: uses prime editing, which is more precise, being a “search-and-replace” approach.
- Editas Medicine: develops gene-editing therapies through tools such as Cas12a, with programs specializing in eye diseases.
- Caribou Biosciences: works on CRISPR-edited, off-the-shelf cell therapies, focusing on cancer treatments.
Intellia’s 2025 highlights and the risks investors can’t ignore
From a business point of view, Intellia had another solid year.
That said, here are the year’s highlights with breakthroughs on one side, and execution and safety risks on the other.
Breakthroughs
- Lonvo-z (NTLA-2002) showed real durability. In pooled Phase 1/2 data, 31 of 32 patients on the 50 mg dose (for a rare genetic swelling disorder) stopped having attacks and no longer needed preventive drugs.
- Moved into a pivotal phase. Intellia wrapped up enrollment in its global Phase 3 HAELO study in September, keeping it on track for topline data by mid-2026.
- More proof in ATTR. Longer-term Phase 1 data showed that in vivo liver editing could potentially work
Major setbacks
- The ATTR program hit a wall.A serious liver event compelled Intellia to pause dosing, while the FDA placed two late-stage studies on clinical hold.
- Sentiment shock. The revelation that a patient later died intensified safety scrutiny.
The financials behind Intellia’s long runway
Intellia is still pre-revenue, and the sales are still collaboration-driven.
In Q3 2025, collaboration sales increased to $13.8 million from $9.1 million the previous year, although still modest, and are moving in the right direction.
The bigger story is expense control.
R&D spending decreased significantly to $94.7 million from $123.4 million, while general and administrative expenses remained steady at $30.5 million.
That discipline helped narrow out its quarterly net loss to $101.3 million, down from $135.7 million a year earlier.
Moreover, cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities totaled a healthy $669.9 million at September 30, but fell from $861.7 million at year-end 2024.
Additionally, Intellia raised $114.5 million net through an at-the-market offering in Q3, saying its current resources are enough to fund operations into mid-2027.
Nevertheless, as we look ahead, the consensus sales outlook points to an inflection ahead,
- 2025: Revenue estimated at 56.92 million
- 2026: Revenue estimated at 51.21 million
- 2027: Revenue estimated at 266.27 million
- 2028: Revenue estimated at 667.77 million
- 2029: Revenue estimated at 1.47 billion
- 2030: Revenue estimated at 2.35 billion
Source: Seeking Alpha
Related: Veteran analyst resets AI stock buy list for 2026
