Defiance files an AI bottleneck ETF that could hold private companies

ETF Series Solutions, the trust that would house the fund, filed on Nov. 6, 2026 to register the Defiance Serenity AI Bottleneck ETF, with Defiance ETFs, LLC named as adviser. The fund does not yet exist and cannot be bought.

The registration statement leaves the ticker, the exchange and the management fee blank. It proposes to become effective 75 days after the Nov. 6 filing, which would be Jan. 20, 2027.

Up to 15% in private companies

The fund may invest up to 15% of its net assets in privately issued securities of companies tied to bottlenecks in the artificial intelligence supply chain, which the filing calls AI bottleneck companies. It could hold them directly or through single-asset special purpose vehicles sponsored by unaffiliated third parties, each set up to hold the shares of one private company.

A bottleneck, as the filing defines it, exists when AI-related demand, limited qualified supply, manufacturing complexity, capacity constraints or a shift in how customers buy could produce a significant, positive shift in a company's earnings power.

The filing calls that private stake the private sleeve, treats the holdings as illiquid, and caps all illiquid holdings together at 15% of net assets. The sleeve sits inside that cap and could fill it.

On each private investment the fund would pay a one-time access fee, expected to run from about 5% to 8% of the amount invested. The filing says that fee reduces the net amount of the fund's capital invested in the underlying company.

Those securities would not trade on a public market and could not be redeemed on demand. A transfer, if allowed at all, would need the sponsor's consent and would follow the restrictions in the vehicle's documents.

They would be carried in the daily net asset value at fair value, based on assumptions and estimates rather than a market price.

The filing warns that if the adviser or the sub-adviser receives non-public information about a private company, they may for some period be unable to buy or sell that company's public shares, or the public shares of related companies, for the fund.

The fund would seek long-term capital appreciation. Under normal circumstances it would invest at least 80% of its net assets in AI bottleneck companies, chosen by a still-unnamed sub-adviser.

The businesses it names include AI compute and silicon, memory, advanced packaging, and semiconductors, including testing equipment and supply chains, along with optical connectivity, power and thermal infrastructure, and robotics.

Serenity Bottleneck Research, LLC, the firm in the fund's name, would supply the research used to identify those companies. The filing says the still-unnamed sub-adviser, not Serenity, would choose the securities, size the positions and place the trades.

What already trades

A fund built on the same idea already trades. xETFs states that the xETFs AI Bottlenecks ETF, NECK, began trading on Sept. 23, 2026, and that its expense ratio is 0.75%. xETFs describes an actively managed portfolio of companies at critical constraints across the AI industry, including memory, optics, networking, power and compute. Its summary prospectus, dated Sept. 17, 2026, does not describe a sleeve of privately issued securities.

Defiance already runs a neighboring fund, the Defiance AI & Power Infrastructure ETF, AIPO. Defiance lists an expense ratio of 0.69% and an index of U.S.-listed companies tied to the electrical grid, data centers and AI hardware. That is a different promise from an active portfolio with a private sleeve.

Nothing in the Nov. 6 filing changes a fund an investor holds now. Next to the bottleneck fund already trading, the new proposal is a sleeve of private companies.