Q&A Series: Here’s how you can gain exposure to SpaceX and Anthropic ahead of their IPOs

Artificial intelligence has been one of the market’s strongest investment themes in 2026, with gains extending well beyond the Magnificent Seven. While early enthusiasm centred on AI leaders such as Nvidia, investors are increasingly recognising that the AI opportunity spans a much broader ecosystem. Cybersecurity firms, memory chip makers, networking companies, and cloud infrastructure providers are all benefiting from rising AI adoption.

At the same time, some of the most sought-after AI-related opportunities remain private. Companies such as Anthropic, one of the leading developers of frontier AI models, and SpaceX, whose Starlink satellite network is playing an increasingly important role in global connectivity, have attracted significant investor interest despite not being publicly listed. While investors await their eventual IPOs, many have been looking for ways to participate in their growth today, whether through publicly listed companies that hold stakes in these private firms or through proxy investments linked to their growth.

In this article, we explore the KraneShares Public-Private AI & Technology ETF, a hybrid fund that combines exposure to publicly listed AI beneficiaries with select private technology companies, including SpaceX and Anthropic, offering investors a unique way to participate in the growth of both public and private AI leaders.

Introducing the KraneShares Public-Private AI & Technology ETF

The KraneShares Public-Private AI & Technology ETF (NASDAQ: AGIX) invests in both publicly listed and private AI and technology companies, offering diversified exposure across the AI ecosystem. Its holdings span developers of foundational AI models, providers of the hardware, computing power, cloud infrastructure, and data services that enable AI training, inference, and deployment, as well as AI-driven application companies positioned to benefit from the accelerating adoption and transformative impact of AI.

Table 1: Key information about the ETF

ETF Details
Underlying Index*	Solactive Etna Artificial General Intelligence Index
Base Currency	USD
Trading Currency	USD
Nasdaq Ticker	AGIX
Listing Date	17 July 2024
Number of Holdings	60
Assets Under Management	USD 1,088,861,350
Trading Board Lot Size	1 unit
Expense Ratio	0.99%
Dividend Distribution Frequency	Annually
Source: First Trust. Data as of 4 June 2026 *Excludes the private holdings of the ETF

1. Where do you see the next phase of AI growth opportunities emerging?

We see the next phase of AI growth unfolding across two dimensions: the evolution of AI deployment models, and the physical infrastructure required to support them.

On the deployment side, we are transitioning from agentic AI — where models function as autonomous employees capable of multi-step reasoning, tool use, and parallel agent orchestration — toward what we call ambient AI: always-on agents that sit in the background, continuously reasoning and acting proactively without explicit prompting. This shift carries profound implications for token consumption and, by extension, the revenue trajectory of model providers and cloud infrastructure companies.

On the infrastructure side, we have identified four physical constraints — or "walls" — that will define where capital flows and where pricing power accrues: high-bandwidth memory (HBM), advanced wafer and packaging supply chains, power delivery to the chip level, and optical interconnect infrastructure. Because these walls constrain every AI company simultaneously, the companies that own and supply these chokepoints will capture durable value regardless of which model company ultimately leads. Beyond infrastructure, we see robotics as the long-term killer application for AI — physical AI that can operate in homes, factories, and logistics networks.

2. Could you walk us through AGIX’s index methodology and explain how companies are selected for inclusion?

AGIX's public equity sleeve is constructed using a proprietary AI Score framework, applied systematically across a universe of thousands of publicly listed companies. The selection process begins with a broad industry filter to establish a relevant starting universe, followed by scoring on three primary dimensions: the degree to which a company's revenue is directly attributable to AI products or services; the progress and differentiation of its AI product roadmap; and — most importantly — forward revenue visibility and measurable business impact from AI.

Companies are ranked and filtered using this composite score, resulting in a concentrated portfolio of approximately 50 names. The portfolio is rebalanced quarterly, with position weights determined by a combination of AI Score and free-float market capitalization. The objective is to construct a portfolio that is genuinely AI-native — reflecting what is actually happening across the AI eco-system — rather than a broad technology basket with incidental AI exposure.

3. What incremental AI exposure does AGIX provide relative to an ETF tracking the Nasdaq-100 Index (e.g. QQQ)?

AGIX is designed to be complementary to, rather than duplicative of, a Nasdaq-100 allocation. The incremental exposure operates at two levels.

At the public equity level, AGIX's AI Score methodology tilts the portfolio toward companies with direct, measurable AI revenue contribution — including hardware, infrastructure and application companies, and model-adjacent businesses that are underrepresented or absent from the Nasdaq-100.

At the private market level, AGIX holds positions in companies such as Anthropic, SpaceX/xAI, and Neuro — none of which are included in the Nasdaq-100 or accessible through any major public index. These companies represent some of the fastest-growing AI-native businesses in the world, and the inability to access them through public markets is precisely the gap AGIX is designed to close. For investors who hold Nasdaq 100 as their core growth allocation, AGIX's private sleeve provides genuinely differentiated exposure that cannot be replicated through any publicly traded proxy.

4. AGIX uniquely holds private companies like Anthropic and SpaceX. How exactly does this private sleeve operate within a daily-tradable ETF, and how are these holdings valued?

AGIX operates under SEC rules that permit an ETF to hold up to 15% of assets in illiquid securities, including private company equity. The private sleeve is managed within this constraint at all times. If private holdings appreciate above the 15% threshold, the fund has a 30-day cure period during which we can work with brokers and market makers to source short-term liquidity and bring the allocation back into compliance. If the threshold cannot be resolved within that window, the fund will seek buyers through the private secondary market or directly through the portfolio companies themselves, given our position on their cap tables.

Valuation is handled by a dedicated fair value committee at KraneShares, which convenes daily to determine the fair value of each private holding. The primary reference point is the most recent primary financing round, which serves as the valuation anchor. Between primary rounds, the committee incorporates secondary market transaction data from multiple data vendors to assess whether marks should be adjusted. All deliberations and minutes are documented and shared with the fund's external auditor to ensure best-practice governance. These daily fair values feed directly into AGIX's published net asset value, providing investors with daily pricing transparency on the private holdings. Premium and discount management is handled through the standard ETF authorized participant mechanism, which allows creation and redemption activity to keep secondary market prices closely aligned with NAV.

5. Have AGIX’s private holdings contributed positively to performance thus far?

Yes, materially so. Since inception, AGIX has returned approximately 79%, compared to roughly 67% for the fund's AI-scored public equity benchmark and approximately 51% for the Nasdaq-100 over the same period. The roughly 12.3-percentage-point outperformance of AGIX versus its own public equity benchmark is attributable primarily to the private holdings.

Two positions illustrate the magnitude of this contribution. Anthropic was acquired at a valuation of approximately $61.5 billion in February 2025; the company is reportedly now raising capital at a valuation of approximately $900 billion. Our xAI position was entered via a tender offer at a valuation of approximately $113 billion, which subsequently repriced to $250 billion before xAI's merger with SpaceX. The private sleeve has in each case allowed AGIX to capture the majority of the appreciation cycle prior to any potential public listing.

Data from Bloomberg as of 5/20/2026

6. If Anthropic or SpaceX were to go public, what would happen to AGIX’s private holdings? Are there plans to add more private companies?

An IPO by any of AGIX's private holdings would be a positive event for the fund. Upon listing, those positions would transition from private securities to publicly traded equities. Given the structural funding requirements of frontier AI development — which increasingly require capital at a scale that private markets alone cannot sustain — we view IPOs by Anthropic, SpaceX, and other holdings as an eventual inevitability.

As the current private holdings approach and ultimately complete public listings, we intend to actively replenish the private sleeve with the next wave of AI-native private companies. Our most recent addition is Nuro, an autonomous vehicle and delivery robotics company with a proven technology platform, a near-zero accident record across millions of miles of testing, and a strategic partnership with Uber. Looking further ahead, we are actively evaluating physical AI and AI-enabled prediction market companies, which we believe represent the next major frontier of value creation — and where the technology maturity curve is advancing faster than most investors appreciate. Additional private investments are expected to be announced via press release as they are finalised.