An AI-focused ETF from a hedge fund veteran is gaining attention by soaring 60% over the past year

When Ivana Delevska launched her fund in August 2021, she had a sense that artificial intelligence would be huge. A hedge fund veteran, having worked at Citadel, Millennium and Tiger Management, Delevska specializes in the industrial sector, communicating with more than 100 companies she covers. By figuring out where companies were investing their dollars, she saw the AI boom coming. “We were able to spot a trend way earlier than everybody else … just because we talked to industrial companies that were investing in the GPUs for AI,” Delevska said in an interview, referring to graphics processing units . Delevska's Spear Alpha ETF (SPRX ), with $70 million in assets under management, has about 26 holdings and almost everything in her portfolio is expected to benefit in some way from AI. “AI is obviously the biggest theme — there is no question — and it's impacting basically 95% of our portfolio,” she said. “So pretty much everything we were invested [in] right now is going to benefit from AI in one way or another. SPRX 1Y mountain Spear Alpha ETF Almost 11% in Nvidia The actively managed ETF is up more than 60% in the past 12 months, outpacing the better known Ark Innovation ETF . By contrast, the Cathie Wood-led ARKK has gained a little more than 21% in the same time. One big driver for Spear's outperformance is an overweighting in Nvidia . First bought in 2023, the chip darling has become the biggest holding in SPRX with an almost 11% weighting. “When we were going into 2023, Nvidia was completely out of favor. So it was really like a way to play offense,” Delevska said. “It was a high risk investment, but also a high return investment.” Now that Nvidia has soared more than 220% in the past year, Delevska sees the stock playing a more defensive role in her portfolio, with 30% to 40% expected return over the next several years. AI apart, Spear Alpha ETF invests in other themes, like enterprise digitalization, space exploration and decarbonization. However, Spear doesn't take a thematic approach, Delevska said. “We derive the themes from the companies that we cover,” she said. “It's very similar to like the way you would run a long book at a fund like Citadel, for example. It's all about like the individual stock picks, so that's where you derive the alpha from.” Spear Alpha ETF has taken in $54 million in inflows so far in 2024, according to FactSet. Wood hasn't fared as well, suffering $1.36 billion in ARKK outflows in 2024 as investors grew disappointed at its performance.