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Three years after the release of ChatGPT, the broader AI theme is still the hottest trade on Wall Street. However, as the technology cycle evolves, different themes within the broader sector are getting their time in the spotlight. Recently, investors have turned their attention toward AI networking, and it's led to scintillating gains. AI networking refers to how AI can improve the tasks of large IT computing systems. The S&P 500 has risen about 16% so far this year, and the Nasdaq 100 is up 21%, but funds that have exposure to the theme have been crushing the broader indexes. The Spear Alpha ETF (SPRX) is up 48% this year and 135% since the market bottomed on April 8. The networking theme is performing well at the moment because it's where firms are making the biggest efficiency advances in AI technology right now, not semiconductors, said Ivana Delevska, the CIO at Spear Invest who manages the Spear Alpha ETF. "If you look at the chip itself, it's pretty optimized, so there is really not much that improved from one generation," she told Business Insider. "The core performance improvement is coming from how chips are connected together." "You need networking in several different parts of the data centers. You need it for scale-up, which is to connect GPUs to GPUs. You need it for the scale-out, which is to connect GPUs to the outside world," she continued. "They provide solutions that are enabling you to connect, to have better connections, and depending on whether you're going short distances, longer distances, and where you're physically located, you would be using different solutions." Related stories Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Delevska's fund, which rebalances often, has been positioned for the AI networking trade in the last year. Most of the fund's top holdings have exposure to the networking theme. Here are SPRX's top eight holdings, and their returns year-to-date: Astera Labs, 9.68% weight, up 25% in 2025 Coherent, 8.72% weight, up 61% in 2025 Nvidia, 8.53% weight, up 41% in 2025 Credo Technologies, 8.3% weight, up 136% in 2025 Arista Networks, 6.42% weight, up 21% in 2025 Cloudflare, 6.18% weight, up 113% in 2025 Marvell Technologies, 5.2% weight, down 17.88% in 2025 Ciena, 4.93% weight, up 152% in 2025 Astera Labs, as implied by its ranking as the fund's biggest holding, its Delevska's highest-conviction pick going forward. The firm's products "help connect GPU to GPU to drive better performance," she said. "They have several products in the pipeline that are going to be much larger than their current product offering." While gains in the networking theme have already been robust, Delevska said the trade still has legs. One of the next themes she's watching is AI applications — through stocks like Shopify — but there's still some time before that trade picks up, she said. "We haven't really seen a lot of traction on the AI application side," Delevska said. "We think this is going to come in like 3 years-plus." Other ETFs that are capitalizing on the AI networking theme include the Tortoise AI Infrastructure ETF (TCAI), which is up 29% since it launched in August, and the iShares Future AI & Tech ETF (ARTY), up 31% this year and 75% since April 8.
