ChatGPT has captured investors' imagination, but Tesla is among the 'hidden gems' of artificial intelligence, Cathie Wood says

• ChatGPT has excited investors' imagination on AI, according to Ark Invest's Cathie Wood.
• But Tesla and Exact Sciences are poised to become big winners from artificial intelligence, she said.

The rise of ChatGPT has spurred excitement on Wall Street, but don't overlook other innovators in artificial intelligence, said Ark Invest's Cathie Wood.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance Live on Thursday, Wood said she's pleased to see that ChatGPT has captured the imagination of investors, who mostly have not been buying companies that prioritize innovation.

She sees AI delivering productivity gains and pointed to Facebook parent Meta Platforms highlighting the technology as a way to drive efficiency.

For its part, ChatGPT has shown a capacity for a range of tasks, such as writing stock stories, layoff emails, and even dating-app messages. And the hype surrounding OpenAI's brainchild has already sent several larger artificial intelligence stocks soaring since ChatGPT's launch on November 30. Even some small-cap AI stocks have seen massive rallies too.

But not all the companies that can capitalize on AI are that obvious, Wood said.

"We believe that the hidden gems that will benefit the most from artificial intelligence are those companies with proprietary datasets," she explained said, highlighting electric vehicle maker Tesla and cancer diagnostics company Exact Sciences.

Tesla has by far the largest collection of real-world driving data, giving it an edge in artificial intelligence and allowing it to lead the pack in autonomous-driving services, Wood said.

"It's also a winner-take-most opportunity," she added. "The company that is able to get an autonomous vehicle from point A to point B the most safely and quickly is going to be the winner. That's going to be the go-to service."

Then there's Exact Sciences, which offers laboratory testing services and screening products for early cancer detection.

It also likely possesses the most data in the oncology molecular diagnostic testing space, Wood said, and it's applying artificial intelligence to that data to help detect cancer in stage 1.

Exact Sciences is also an example of a company that checks off the three key criteria she has when it comes to artificial intelligence stocks: the most propriety data, the right domain expertise, and AI expertise.

"These are scientists with a deep understanding of biology, AI expertise and data," Wood said. "So those are the kinds of companies we're looking for."