SpaceX IPO, MANGOS ETFs Stoke Concentration Concerns

SpaceX priced its initial public offering at $135 per share and rose roughly 50% in early trading to about $155, placing its market value near $2 trillion. The stock’s early gains increased client demand for SpaceX allocations and coincided with filings for new ETFs that group major AI and advanced-technology companies.

The proposed MANGOS ETF baskets list Meta, Anthropic, Nvidia, Google, OpenAI and SpaceX. Zeno Mercer, head of robotics and AI research at VettaFi, warned that the lineup excludes some significant participants such as Amazon and concentrates exposure in a small number of high-valuation stocks.

Mercer noted that Elon Musk’s public target of $1 trillion in annual SpaceX revenue by 2030 would imply roughly a 53-fold increase in annual sales over five years. He also pointed to competitive pressures, including a planned satellite venture involving Delta and Amazon.

Mercer highlighted physical, hardware-driven parts of the AI economy that may be overlooked by funds focused on software and models, naming mobile warehouse robots, drones and global systems integrators as examples. He also referenced the iShares Expanded Tech Software Sector ETF (IGV), which is down roughly 17% year to date.

Paul Baiocchi, head of fund sales and strategy at SS&C ALPS Advisors, compared current client interest in SpaceX to demand seen during the dot-com era and reported an “unprecedented wave” of advisory calls requesting SpaceX allocations. He flagged index concentration risk and noted that three technology-heavy sectors now account for more than half of the S&P 500 by weight.

As a counterweight to sector concentration, Baiocchi pointed to the ALPS Equal Sector Weight ETF (EQL). EQL equally weights the S&P 500’s 11 Global Industry Classification Standard sectors and recently converted from a fund-of-funds structure to direct-stock replication, a change that lowers costs and alters tracking. He also highlighted the ALPS Electrification Infrastructure ETF (ELFY) as an exposure to rising power demand from data centers and cited a recent Microsoft-Chevron data-center power arrangement as an example of growing corporate demand for electricity infrastructure.

Baiocchi added that the conflict in Iran has shifted attention to North American midstream energy infrastructure, boosting interest in funds that hold pipeline and energy-transport assets, including the Alerian MLP ETF (AMLP) and the Alerian Energy Infrastructure ETF (ENFR).

VettaFi is the index provider for AMLP, EQL, ELFY and ENFR and receives an index licensing fee for those products. Those ETFs are not issued, sponsored, endorsed or sold by VettaFi, and VettaFi has no obligation or liability in connection with their issuance, administration, marketing or trading.