AGIX ETF, Kraneshares AI and tech ETF, renowned for its ability to invest in public and private AI companies, reported that it has increased its allocation to anthropic and added Nuro, a leading Autonomous Driving AI company. The moves expand AGIX's private sleeve to over 5% of net assets and come weeks after the fund listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, bringing these pre-IPO names within reach of GCC investors for the first time.
In February, we covered how AGIX's private holdings were attracting attention amid Anthropic's $20 billion funding round and the xAI-SpaceX merger. Now, the fund has moved again. On May 7, 2026, KraneShares announced that its KraneShares Artificial Intelligence & Technology ETF (AGIX) had taken a direct equity stake in Nuro Inc., a private autonomous-vehicle software company, and also increased its allocation to Anthropic.
The additions bring AGIX's total private market exposure to approximately 5.28% of net assets across three holdings: Anthropic, SpaceX, and now Nuro. That remains well within the 15% illiquid cap permitted under SEC Rule 22e-4, but the direction of travel is clear: AGIX is systematically building a private AI sleeve that few publicly traded ETFs can replicate.
Who is Nuro?
Nuro was founded in 2016 by two former Google self-driving engineers and holds a distinction that no other company in the world can claim: the only autonomous vehicle exemption ever granted by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Over eight years of operation, Nuro has logged more than 1.7 million autonomous miles with zero at-fault incidents.
In September 2024, Nuro made a significant strategic pivot. Rather than continuing to operate its own fleet of proprietary delivery vehicles, the company shifted to licensing its autonomous driving system, branded Nuro Driver™, to third-party automakers and mobility platforms. The move trades volume for margin, shifting Nuro's business model toward higher-margin software revenues and a less capital-intensive operating structure.
The immediate commercial expression of that pivot is a partnership with Uber and luxury EV maker Lucid Motors. Over the next six years, Uber plans to deploy over 20,000 Lucid EVs equipped with Nuro Driver™, with a commercial launch in the San Francisco Bay Area targeted for late 2026. If that rollout scales as planned, it would represent one of the largest autonomous vehicle deployments globally.
"Nuro gives AGIX shareholders access to one of the most compelling private autonomous mobility platforms in the market at a time when agentic AI is moving decisively into the physical world."
- Derek Yan, CFA, Senior Investment Strategist, KraneShares
How the Private Sleeve Has Evolved
AGIX launched on July 18, 2024, as a hybrid public-private ETF. Its early private exposure was anchored by xAI, Elon Musk's AI company, which was later converted into SpaceX equity following the xAI-SpaceX merger in early 2026. Anthropic was added in early 2025 as the AI model developer's commercial traction accelerated. Nuro is now the third direct private holding.
AGIX Private Market Holdings (as of May 1, 2026)
The Anthropic weight increase is also notable. In our February article, private holdings were described as representing "several percentage points" of net assets for both SpaceX and Anthropic. Since the ADX listing in April, Anthropic's weight has been confirmed at 2.67%, making it AGIX's largest private holding and its tenth-largest overall position in the fund.
Top Holdings: The Public Picture
The private sleeve sits on top of a 62-stock public portfolio dominated by semiconductor and hyperscaler names. NVIDIA leads at 4.89%, followed by Alphabet, Broadcom, Microsoft, and Meta. The overall portfolio is heavily weighted toward technology at 72.92% of net assets, with communication services as a secondary exposure at 10.80%.
Performance and Fund Data
AGIX has delivered approximately 65% in NAV returns over the past year and outperformed its benchmark index by 8.5% since inception in July 2024. The YTD period has been more challenging, with the fund down around 11% as of early May 2026, broadly in line with AI sector consolidation following the strong gains of 2025, when AGIX returned 29.21% against a category average of 22.78%.
What This Means for GCC Investors
In our February piece, we noted that AGIX's private exposure was rare among publicly listed ETFs. What has changed since then is access: AGIX listed directly on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange on April 16, 2026. GCC investors can now hold Anthropic, SpaceX, and Nuro through a single, AED-settled instrument traded during Gulf market hours, without the need for offshore accounts or accredited investor status.
The ADX listing itself arrived amid sharply rising regional ETF activity. ADX reported a 183% year-on-year surge in ETF trade value in March 2026 alone. The timing of Nuro's addition, coming just weeks after the ADX launch, means GCC investors enter AGIX at a point when its private portfolio is arguably at its most diversified to date.
The Gulf's strategic alignment with AI is also a relevant context. The UAE has named Anthropic as a national AI partner, and GCC sovereign wealth funds collectively deployed an estimated $66 billion into global AI in 2025. AGIX does not capture that deployment directly, but it tracks the same companies and themes that those sovereign vehicles are backing in private markets.
What to Watch
Three near-term catalysts could affect AGIX's private sleeve directly:
- Anthropic IPO timeline: Anthropic has been cited as a potential 2026 IPO candidate. If that proceeds, AGIX's private holding would convert to listed equity, and the fund's premium for pre-IPO access would effectively expire. The recent weight increase to 2.67% suggests KraneShares sees value in holding through that event.
- Nuro's Uber-Lucid commercial launch: The planned late-2026 deployment in San Francisco is a binary milestone. Success would validate Nuro Driver™ as a licensable platform; delays would raise questions about the timeline to commercial scale.
- Private sleeve expansion: KraneShares has now added three private holdings in under two years. With sub-advisor Etna Capital Management citing a pipeline of private AI opportunities, further additions, potentially in robotics, agentic AI, or infrastructure, remain plausible.
Key Takeaway
Nuro's addition takes AGIX's private exposure to its broadest point yet, spanning large-language models, space infrastructure, and autonomous driving within a single regulated ETF. For GCC investors now able to access the fund through ADX, the portfolio's evolution since February has been substantial: a new private holding, a deeper Anthropic position, and a fund that continues to outpace its category over longer time horizons, even as the short-term AI trade consolidates.
