[Weekend Money] The Advent of Astra Ushering in the AGI Era: Beneficiary ETFs

As OpenAI unveiled its next-generation model, "GPT-6 Astra," and declared the dawn of the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) era, investors have turned their attention to related beneficiary stocks.

According to Shinhan Investment Corp. on September 13, Astra has significantly enhanced major benchmark performance compared to its predecessor, "GPT 5.6 Sol," and it now surpasses "Claude Fable 5.1," which was previously considered the top model. It outperforms in work automation, terminal operations, scientific tasks, advanced mathematics, and software development. Astra has received particular acclaim for its outstanding visual information processing capabilities. High-quality video, 3D modeling, and Vive coding game products utilizing Astra are seeing rapid growth in use cases.

Shinhan Investment Corp. has named the MANGOS Investment Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) as a major beneficiary of Astra. "MANGOS" is an acronym formed from Meta Platforms, Anthropic, Nvidia, Google, OpenAI, and SpaceX, and is being highlighted as the next group of leading U.S. stocks following the "Magnificent 7" (Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Tesla).

Yorkville MANGOS Plus ETF (ticker: FRUT), newly listed at the end of last month, invests 67% in MANGOS and 33% in AI infrastructure. For unlisted stocks such as OpenAI and Anthropic, the fund uses a total return swap (TRS) approach instead of direct spot holdings, with individual caps at 5% and a combined maximum of 10%.

Park Wooyeol, a research analyst at Shinhan Investment Corp., explained, "The AI infrastructure companies, which make up 33% of the ETF portfolio, consist of compute and server (Dell, Intel), memory (Micron), optical communications (Lumentum), and storage (Seagate, SanDisk, Western Digital). This ensures a diversified inclusion of leading companies in the AI data center value chain." He added, "Their 12-month forward sales and earnings estimates continue to rise sharply, with SanDisk's momentum being the strongest, recording a 2,365% annual return."

The key investment rationale for this ETF is that it provides an indirect investment channel into unlisted frontier AI companies. Both OpenAI and Anthropic, which are unlisted, are frontier AI developers. There is speculation that Anthropic may pursue an IPO around the November midterm elections. The two companies’ next-generation models continue to break each other’s records: until early September, Anthropic’s Fable 5.1 had been rated as the top-performing model, but this record has now been overtaken by the newly released OpenAI Astra.

Park explained, "Anthropic’s corporate valuation is estimated at $965 billion (approximately KRW 1,293 trillion), recognized for its high growth as it expands its enterprise AI market share, and is trading at about 20 times current revenue. OpenAI’s current estimated valuation is $852 billion, slightly lower than Anthropic, but expectations are rising thanks to the Astra launch. While it is unclear which company’s AI model will ultimately prove number one, investors can access both via the MANGOS ETF."

Cybersecurity-related ETFs are also expected to benefit. OpenAI has announced that Astra marks a major inflection point in cybersecurity capabilities. Astra can now discover and exploit vulnerabilities in well-protected systems, even without being guided step-by-step by humans. As performance has become much more powerful, safety concerns have emerged as well. Park noted, "Both domestically and overseas, more cases are being seen where digital vulnerabilities are damaging corporate value. Going forward, the range of digital assets that hackers can target will expand further with AI transformation, the growth of the cloud, and the increase in digital assets." He forecast, "Ultimately, demand for cybersecurity will inevitably grow, and the global cybersecurity market will more than double over the next ten years."

ETFs specializing in the cybersecurity industry include the First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) and ETFMG Prime Cyber Security ETF (HACK). Park suggested that investors favor CIBR for its higher allocation to pure-play cybersecurity companies, with key holdings such as Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, and Palo Alto. He added, "Leading cybersecurity players are seeing steady increases in sales and earnings projections, and operating margins are also at solid levels."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.