There's a moment in every technology cycle when the smart money pivots from betting on who wins the race to betting on who sells the running shoes. For artificial intelligence, that moment may have arrived, and an Abu Dhabi investment firm just planted its flag on European soil to prove it.
Lunate, the private markets-focused investment giant with over $115 billion in assets under management, began trading its Boreas S&P AI Data, Power & Infrastructure UCITS ETF on Deutsche Börse's Xetra exchange last week. The fund trades under tickers POWR (EUR) and POWA (USD), and with this listing, Lunate becomes the first provider from the Middle East and North Africa region to offer ETFs on a European exchange.
The timing is deliberate. While investors have spent the past two years chasing semiconductor stocks and AI model developers, the companies that actually keep the lights on at data centres have been quietly compounding returns. The thesis: you can debate whether OpenAI or Anthropic wins the model wars, but someone has to supply the electricity either way.
The fund tracks the S&P Transatlantic AI-Related Data Center & Power Supply Infrastructure Index, holding 35 companies from the US and developed European markets engaged in operating data centres, generating electricity, and building power supply infrastructure. Top holdings include Oracle, NextEra Energy, Siemens, ABB, and Eaton Corp, names that read more like an industrial equipment catalogue than a tech portfolio.
This is infrastructure investing dressed in AI clothing, and that's precisely the point. Investment in AI-related power infrastructure is projected to exceed $1 trillion annually by 2030, according to research cited by Lunate's strategic partner Northwind. The hyperscalers are spending hundreds of billions on data centre buildouts, and someone needs to provide the substations, transformers, and cooling systems.
The expense ratio comes in at 49 basis points, competitive for a thematic product but not cheap. For comparison, broad European equity ETFs typically charge under 20 basis points. Investors are paying a premium for the thematic wrapper and the curated exposure.
Lunate's path to Xetra tells a broader story about capital market linkages between the Gulf and Europe. The firm launched in January 2024 as a spinout combining expertise from several Abu Dhabi investment vehicles, including Chimera Capital, which is part of Royal Group. Behind that sits Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's national security adviser and a key figure in Abu Dhabi's expanding financial footprint.
The ETF business represents a relatively small piece of Lunate's overall operations (the firm's ETF assets total around $250 million, making it the largest issuer in MENA but still modest by global standards). But the European expansion signals ambition beyond regional dominance.
“The launch of our Boreas range of thematic ETFs in Europe marks a historic milestone,” noted Sherif Salem, Partner and Head of Public Markets at Lunate. The firm has assembled a credible distribution infrastructure for the push: Jane Street as market maker, AHP Capital/NTree Deutschland as distributor, and Euroclear Bank handling settlement.
Product development support comes from Northwind, an Abu Dhabi-based consultancy majority-owned by Lunate and led by Geir Espeskog and Christopher Vass. Espeskog's resume reads like a tour of institutional ETF distribution: a decade trading derivatives at Goldman Sachs, followed by building BlackRock's ETF business in the Nordics during the financial crisis, then leading ETF distribution across Asia Pacific.
His framework for thematic investing, which he calls T-E-S-T (Technology, Energy, Security Triangle), argues that modern innovation is driven by exponential R&D spending at the intersection of these three domains. The AI infrastructure ETF fits squarely within that thesis.
Lunate isn't stopping with infrastructure. The firm plans to list a Boreas S&P Absolute Luxury UCITS ETF on both the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange and Xetra on January 27. That fund will track 32 European luxury companies including Hermès, Ferrari, Burberry, LVMH, and Richemont, playing on projections that the global millionaire population will grow nearly 10% by 2029.
A Boreas Solactive Quantum Computing UCITS ETF is also in the pipeline for later this year, continuing the firm's strategy of capturing distinct technological megatrends through dedicated wrappers.
For European investors seeking AI exposure without the valuation vertigo of pure-play tech stocks, the Boreas AI infrastructure fund offers an alternative narrative. It's a bet that the real money in AI won't flow to whoever builds the cleverest chatbot, but to whoever keeps the servers humming.
Whether that thesis plays out depends on factors ranging from power grid capacity constraints to regulatory approvals for new data centre construction. But for a firm that built its reputation in private markets and alternatives, Lunate is making a very public statement about where it sees the next decade of value creation.
The Middle East has been exporting energy to Europe for decades. Now it's exporting investment products designed to capture the infrastructure powering the next industrial revolution.