The AI Buildout Is Accelerating — and the Portfolio Is Positioned for It

When we launched the Valor AI Foundations Portfolio earlier this year, the thesis was straightforward: artificial intelligence is a generational technology shift, and the companies most likely to benefit over the long term aren’t necessarily the ones building AI applications. They’re the companies building the physical infrastructure that makes AI work — the semiconductors, the memory chips, the power systems, the data centers, the fiber optics, and the critical materials that go into all of it.

Six months into 2026, the portfolio is positioned consistent with that thesis — and the dynamics driving it continue to build.

What We’re Seeing

The AI buildout is no longer a story about who has the best chatbot or the flashiest demo. It’s an infrastructure story. Every major technology company in the world is spending aggressively to build out AI capacity — and they all need the same things: advanced chips, high-bandwidth memory, power generation, cooling systems, and high-speed data connectivity.

The portfolio’s materials-oriented sleeves, covering copper, metals, and critical minerals, have also contributed meaningfully, with copper in particular rallying sharply over the trailing month. The defense sleeve has been modestly positive. Healthcare technology has been the one area of weakness year to date, though it too has shown signs of stabilizing recently.

Where Conviction Is Building

One of the advantages of this portfolio’s design is that we can observe, in real time, how the actively managed core holding is repositioning. And the signal over the past several months has been clear.

The portfolio has been moving decisively away from application-layer software and toward semiconductor hardware. Several large-cap software names that were part of the core holding earlier this year have been eliminated entirely, while positions in semiconductor manufacturers, memory producers, and chip packaging companies have increased significantly. The two largest positions in the core holding are now both memory companies — reflecting the structural undersupply of high-bandwidth memory that every AI accelerator chip requires. Together, these two positions alone represent over 13% of the core fund’s weight.

Optical infrastructure is emerging as a theme. As AI workloads scale inside data centers, the speed at which data moves between chips, servers, and facilities becomes a binding constraint. The portfolio has been adding exposure to companies that make optical transceivers, fiber optic components, and high-speed interconnect technology. This is the kind of bottleneck that tends to be underappreciated early in a buildout cycle and then reprices quickly as capacity tightens.

Memory and storage are getting structurally more weight. The memory and storage complex now represents roughly one-fifth of the core holding by weight. Across the broader portfolio, several of the satellite sleeves are also heavily weighted toward storage and data infrastructure companies, creating a portfolio-wide conviction in this theme. The bet is straightforward: AI doesn’t work without memory, and the world doesn’t have enough of it yet.

Nuclear energy is building across multiple sleeves. AI data centers consume enormous amounts of power, and the grid isn’t ready for it. The portfolio holds exposure to nuclear energy companies across its power, defense, and critical materials sleeves — a position that reflects the view that nuclear may be one of the few scalable, reliable power sources capable of supporting the energy demands of large-scale AI deployment.

Access to private AI companies — inside an ETF. One of the more distinctive features of the portfolio’s actively managed core holding is that it holds positions in private AI companies, including Anthropic and OpenAI. These are two of the most important companies in the AI ecosystem, and for most individual investors, there’s simply no way to access them — they aren’t publicly traded, and private market investments typically require institutional-scale capital and specialized fund structures. The fact that an actively managed ETF can hold positions like these gives the portfolio exposure that passive index funds and most other retail-accessible vehicles simply cannot offer. It’s a meaningful differentiator, and one worth paying attention to as these companies continue to scale.

The Thesis in Practice

We built this portfolio around a simple observation: in every major technology revolution, there’s an early phase where excitement focuses on what the technology can do, and a later phase where value accrues to the companies that solve the physical constraints of deploying it at scale. We believe AI is moving into that second phase.

The portfolio is designed to be positioned for that transition. It seeks exposure to the foundational layers of the AI economy — compute, power, data, connectivity, and materials — while maintaining the flexibility to adapt as the cycle evolves. The underlying funds are reviewed quarterly, and the actively managed core holding gives us a real-time window into how institutional investors are reading the AI landscape.

This is not a short-term trade. The Valor AI Foundations Portfolio is designed for long-term, growth-oriented investors who have the patience and risk tolerance for a concentrated, thematic strategy. We typically recommend it as a satellite allocation within the growth-oriented portion of a client’s plan, sized appropriately relative to the client’s overall objectives and comfort with volatility.

Looking Ahead

The capital expenditure commitments from the largest technology companies suggest that the demand for AI infrastructure is not slowing — if anything, it’s accelerating. Our belief is that as this buildout continues, value will accrue disproportionately to the companies solving the physical constraints: the semiconductor manufacturers, the memory producers, the power providers, and the companies building the connectivity and materials infrastructure that AI depends on. The portfolio is designed to seek to capture that value across multiple layers of the supply chain.

If you’d like to learn more about how the Valor AI Foundations Portfolio may fit within your financial plan, we welcome the conversation.

The Valor AI Foundations Portfolio is a custom portfolio of Prosperity Capital Advisors, implemented on the Valor investment platform. Portfolio performance referenced above reflects a weighted calculation based on target allocation weights and individual fund returns through June 1, 2026, and does not reflect actual client account performance and covers the period from February 12, 2026 through June 22, 2026. Past performance is not indicative of future results. All investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. The Valor AI Foundations Portfolio is a thematic strategy and involves risks including concentration risk and potentially higher volatility than broadly diversified approaches. This commentary is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to purchase or sell any security. Please consult your financial advisor to determine whether this strategy is appropriate for your individual circumstances.

Financial planning and investment advisory services offered through Prosperity Capital Advisors, an SEC registered investment advisor.