Defiance ETFs has filed a preliminary prospectus with the SEC for the Defiance US AI Resilience ETF. The passively managed fund is designed to carry firms least more likely to be disrupted by synthetic intelligence (AI).
The submitting, submitted on Thursday, marks Defiance’s newest thematic guess. Quite than chasing AI upside, this fund takes the other method by focusing on old-economy companies that AI is unlikely to exchange.
What the AI Resilience ETF Holds
The ETF will monitor the VettaFi US AI Resilience Index. The index selects roughly 50 US large-cap firms from VettaFi’s broader fairness universe. It focuses on what the trade has labeled “HALO” companies, brief for Heavy Asset, Low Obsolescence.
These are companies with inelastic demand, long-life bodily infrastructure, and income profiles insulated from labor automation.
The index emphasizes Client Staples, Power, Healthcare, Industrials, Supplies, and Utilities. Holdings are weighted by float-adjusted market cap, capped at 3% per title, and rebalanced quarterly.
Beneath regular circumstances, the fund will make investments at the least 80% of internet belongings in firms that meet these AI-resilience standards. It could use both full replication or consultant sampling to trace the index.
The HALO Thesis Behind the Fund
The ETF arrives as Wall Avenue’s urge for food for HALO shares continues to develop. Goldman Sachs launched the framework in early 2026.
The agency discovered that capital-intensive firms counting on bodily belongings have outperformed capital-light, digital-first friends by about 35% for the reason that begin of 2025.
The reasoning is easy. Transmission grids, pipelines, industrial capability, and transport infrastructure are expensive to copy and sit outdoors the attain of generative AI.
Software program firms, in contrast, face rising displacement threat as AI programs automate extra of their features.
Defiance, which manages over $8 billion in belongings, already operates thematic funds masking quantum computing, AI energy infrastructure, and drone automation.
Its Quantum Computing ETF (QTUM) not too long ago handed $4 billion in AUM with a 5-star Morningstar score. The AI Resilience ETF extends that lineup into contrarian territory.
Key Particulars and What Comes Subsequent
The prospectus remains to be preliminary. The ticker has not been assigned, and administration charges are listed as placeholders. The fund will commerce on Nasdaq as soon as the submitting turns into efficient, which generally takes about 75 days.
Principal dangers highlighted within the submitting embrace interest-rate sensitivity for capital-intensive holdings and sector focus in staples and industrials.
Penserra Capital Administration will deal with day-to-day portfolio administration via a sub-advisory association.
The precise portfolio managers are Dustin Lewellyn, Ernesto Tong, and Christine Johanson, all from Penserra.
The submitting is on the market on SEC EDGAR underneath ETF Sequence Options. With AI hype dominating markets in 2026, Defiance is betting that traders may also pay for cover in opposition to the opposite facet of that commerce.
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