The New ETF Class: What the Last Twelve Months of Launches Tell Us

Nearly 1,000 new ETFs appeared in fund filings for the first time over the past twelve months. Together they hold close to $500 billion in assets — though a meaningful share of that came from mutual funds converting to the ETF wrapper rather than genuinely new strategies. ETFs now account for over 80% of all new fund launches, up from roughly half just two years ago.

Looking at where the money actually went — not just how many ETFs launched, but which ones attracted real capital — reveals a few patterns about what investors are reaching for right now.

Where the most dollars went

The largest new ETFs by assets are dominated by conversions and institutional launches — big-name firms moving existing strategies into an ETF shell. Akre Focus ETF arrived with $8.5 billion after converting from a mutual fund (and promptly saw $2 billion in redemptions). JPMorgan, Nuveen, and BlackRock each launched or converted multiple active bond and equity ETFs that quickly crossed the billion-dollar mark.

But the flow data tells a more interesting story. Net inflows — new money coming in minus money going out — highlight which products investors are actively choosing, not just which ones inherited assets.

The split is striking. The top three are all active fixed income ETFs from major asset managers. Everything below them is a genuinely new idea — leveraged crypto, AI stock picks, income overlays, risk parity. The institutional money went to bonds; the retail energy went everywhere else.

Income engineering is the dominant theme

The clearest signal in this cycle's launches: investors want income, and they're willing to accept increasingly complex structures to get it. Covered calls, autocallable notes, barrier puts, weekly distributions — the product design has moved well past simple dividend funds.

Calamos Autocallable Income ETF (CAIE) went from $64 million at launch in July 2025 to $651 million by January 2026. It uses a laddered portfolio of autocallable yield notes to target consistent monthly payouts — a structure that was previously only accessible through private placements. Calamos has already filed for a Nasdaq-linked follow-up (CAIQ).

VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF (OMAH) took a different angle: hold Berkshire Hathaway's top 20 public equity holdings, then write options against them to target a 15% annual income stream. It gathered $650 million in six months with almost no redemptions — $667 million in sales against just $12 million out.

Weekly distributions — once unusual — are now a selling point for multiple products. Roundhill's WeeklyPay Top ETF (TOPW) pulled in $495 million in net flows by packaging the WeeklyPay concept across the 25 largest U.S. companies. Other income-focused launches that found traction:

• Roundhill Magnificent Seven Covered Call ETF (MAGY) — $229M in assets, selling call options on the Mag Seven basket
• Roundhill HOOD WeeklyPay ETF (HOOW) — $309M, targeting 1.2x weekly returns on Robinhood stock plus weekly distributions
• YieldMax Semiconductor Portfolio Option Income ETF (CHPY) — $299M, writing options across 15–30 semiconductor names for weekly income
• Simplify Barrier Income ETF (SBAR) — $180M, selling barrier puts with a 30% downside buffer
• NEOS Gold High Income ETF (IAUI) — $276M, covered calls on gold exposure; zero redemptions since launch

The underlying assets being monetized for income range from megacap tech (MAGY) to a single brokerage stock (HOOW) to gold (IAUI). Investors appear comfortable with the tradeoff: IAUI returned roughly 18% since launch while plain gold returned 44% over the same period. The income stream, for these buyers, is the point.

Leveraged single-stock ETFs keep finding buyers

Defiance ETFs launched a wave of 2X daily leveraged products targeting individual companies, and several attracted over $150 million within months. What's notable is which names investors chose to lever up on — they're concentrated in AI infrastructure, quantum computing, space, and nuclear energy.

• Defiance 2X Long Oracle (ORCX) — $218M, drew $493M in net inflows
• Defiance 2X Long IonQ (IONX) — $187M, quantum computing bet with $294M in net inflows
• Defiance 2X Long Oklo (OKLL) — $185M, nuclear energy play, $283M in net inflows
• Defiance 2X Long Rocket Lab (RKLX) — $177M, space and aerospace exposure

These funds tend to run hot in both directions. IONX saw its price range from $8.40 to $103.96 over the past year. Rocket Lab's 2X fund (RKLX) actually had net outflows of $63 million despite growing from $7 million to $177 million in AUM — meaning price appreciation, not new money, drove most of the growth.

T-REX got in on the action too. Its 2X Long BitMiner ETF (BMNU) — providing leveraged exposure to crypto mining stocks — pulled in $1.1 billion in net flows, making it one of the top new ETFs of the period by inflows despite only launching in late 2025.

Crypto ETFs moved beyond Bitcoin

After Bitcoin spot ETFs dominated 2024, this year's crypto launches pushed into altcoins and income overlays.

The 2x Solana ETF (SOLT) from Volatility Shares gathered $816 million in net inflows, reaching $323 million in AUM by November 2025. XRP got similar treatment — Teucrium's 2x Long Daily XRP ETF drew $609 million in flows, while a 1x version pulled in another $241 million.

Nicholas Crypto Income ETF (BLOX) combined crypto exposure with an options income overlay, reaching $250 million. It holds Bitcoin and Ether ETFs alongside crypto-adjacent equities, then writes options for income — blending two of this period's dominant themes into a single product.

Combined net inflows into just these crypto ETFs exceeded $1.9 billion.

One analyst's conviction, packaged as a product

The Dan Ives Wedbush AI Revolution ETF (IVES) is perhaps the most unusual launch of the period. It's built around Dan Ives' proprietary AI research — essentially packaging a Wall Street analyst's stock picks into a 30-name portfolio and selling it as a transparent, daily-disclosed ETF.

It cleared $100 million in its first trading week after launching in June 2025. By October, it crossed $1 billion. It ended January 2026 at $1.03 billion with $941 million in net inflows — the sixth-largest flow total among all new ETFs. Whether or not you think one analyst's views should be a standalone product, investors clearly did — and the flow data shows it wasn't a launch-day spike that faded. The money came in steadily across multiple quarters.

Rethinking index concentration

Two new ETFs attracted hundreds of millions by offering a different answer to the same question: what do you do when the S&P 500 is more concentrated than it's been in decades?

Tema S&P 500 Historical Weight ETF Strategy (DSPY) holds all 500 names but reweights them to match the index's average concentration since 1989. It launched in April 2025, was the first S&P 500 concentration product since the equal-weight ETF in 2003, and went from $2.6 million to $782 million in six months at an expense ratio of just 0.18%.

SPDR Bridgewater All Weather ETF (ALLW) comes at diversification from a different direction — Bridgewater Associates' risk-parity framework, allocating across global equities, bonds, and commodities based on their macro sensitivity. It drew $565 million in net inflows with almost zero redemptions ($4 million).

Both suggest an appetite for thoughtful diversification — investors who want broad exposure but aren't comfortable with how concentrated the standard indices have become.

The conversion wave reshaped the top of the list

Several of the largest new ETFs by assets weren't built from scratch — they were mutual funds that converted to the ETF structure. BlackRock converted its high-yield muni fund into iShares High Yield Muni Active ETF (HIMU), which now holds $2.5 billion. JPMorgan brought out active high yield and mortgage-backed securities ETFs that each crossed $2 billion. Nuveen, AB, and other major managers did the same across fixed income categories.

The pattern mirrors a broader industry shift: sixty mutual funds converted to ETFs over the past year, a new record. Investors increasingly prefer the tax efficiency, transparency, and intraday liquidity of the ETF wrapper, even for asset classes that were traditionally mutual-fund-only.

Nine of the ten largest new ETFs by assets are institutional fixed income products. The lone exception: Dan Ives' AI Revolution ETF, which built its billion-dollar asset base entirely from organic inflows.

Notes

Fund data is drawn from N-PORT filings covering April 2025 through February 2026. Asset figures reflect fund-reported net assets at each period end. Flow data (sales minus redemptions) is reported by funds in their N-PORT filings and may differ from third-party flow estimates. ETF classification uses the SEC's own ETF flag on series-level filings. Individual fund holdings and history are available through the fund section.