Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with AI Private Opportunities Trust (ASX:AIX), Investment Specialist Adam Myers
Lel Smits: AI Private Opportunities Trust is building a portfolio of private AI companies that already earn revenue with stakes in ByteDance, Databricks and one of the world’s leading AI laboratories. The trust raised more than $265 million ahead of listing in June, giving everyday investors access to companies usually reserved for large institutions. AI Private Opportunities Trust investment specialist Adam Myers joins me today to discuss how the portfolio is taking shape, how its holdings fit together and the trust’s move into physical AI.
Adam, welcome back to the Stock Network.
Adam Myers: Thank you. Good to be here.
Lel Smits: Now, the AI investment story has been incredibly powerful, but it’s certainly not been a smooth ride. What do you really make of the recent volatility?
Adam Myers: Investors are becoming more discerning as the industry matures, and that’s healthy. I think it’s also important to distinguish between believing that AI will transform the economy, many of us do believe that, and believing that every AI business will be a great investment, because it absolutely won’t.
So the question that investors have to keep asking themselves is which business will capture the economic benefits and whether those benefits justify the valuations, the prices that investors are paying. And for us, that reinforces the importance of being selective.
Lel Smits: Okay. And Adam, despite a few hiccups, data centers are attracting enormous investments. How do you think about the opportunities really across AI infrastructure?
Adam Myers: There’s a lot more to the AI infrastructure ecosystem than just data centers. We think of the ecosystem as everything required to power AI, to provide computing capacity, to connect the systems, and then to deliver the AI capabilities back to users.
So we like some of the less obvious opportunities across the ecosystem. For example, AIX has recently invested in a well-established business called Voltaris, which manufactures transformers and some of the key components for providing power and electrification to data centers. It’s sort of like the philosophy of investing in picks and shovels during a gold rush.
Lel Smits: Yes, absolutely. And really beyond infrastructure, do you think we’re seeing AI translate into real businesses that are generating meaningful revenue?
Adam Myers: Absolutely. That’s what drives our strategy.
And if I think about our portfolio, take Databricks, which is an 8% holding in AIX. It helps businesses put AI to work, incorporating the internal data, and that’s how AI is most powerful. It’s already generating over $7 billion in annualized revenue, and it’s growing at more than 80% a year.
Another company is Barkdance. We tend to think of it as the company behind TikTok, but it’s probably better to think of it as an AI conglomerate. It’s our largest holding in our portfolio.
It’s already an enormous business. It’s highly profitable, and it’s developing its own AI models. It’s building AI applications and incorporating AI into all aspects of that business, and that’s really driving revenue and profitability.
We’re also seeing very strong growth in commercial adoption of AI models across the board. Businesses are moving beyond sort of experimenting with the technology to actually putting it to work, and I think it’s going to create an increasingly broad range of investment opportunities for us.
Lel Smits: Wonderful. And finally, Adam, what do you think differentiates AIX from the other ways of investing in AI?
Adam Myers: I think there are a few key elements. The first is access. Many of the most interesting AI businesses remain privately owned, so they aren’t really accessible to individual investors.
The second is breadth. We invest, as you’ve said, across the broader ecosystem, so from foundational models and applications to infrastructure and physical AI, so we don’t need to rely on a single technology succeeding or a single outcome. We prefer a portfolio approach.
And the third is in investment discipline. Through GCM Grosvenor, who are our investment partners, we bring an institutional private market expertise to our selection, due diligence, structuring, and portfolio construction, and I think that’s really the combination of how we differentiate ourselves.
Lel Smits: Well, Adam, I really appreciate the update today and look forward to hearing more about AI Private Opportunities Trust as the developments come through.
Adam Myers: Thanks, Lel. Great to chat.
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