Ask ten investors to name the best AI ETF and you will hear ten tickers. Ask what is actually inside those funds and the room goes quiet. The label is marketing. The holdings list is the truth, and it changes every quarter, so a pick made on vibes expires fast. A fund that looked pure AI last year can drift after a single rebalance.
A serious comparison starts with three things: the full holdings, the expense ratio, and how much genuine AI work each holding does. That last part is the hard one. But 10-K filings are public on SEC EDGAR, and AI mentions in them can be counted like anything else. Count the mentions, check the trend, compare against R&D. Three numbers, no opinions.
GPTTicker tracked 499 S&P 500 companies across their latest two 10-K filings, recording AI mentions, year-over-year change, and R&D spend for each. It is the raw material for auditing any AI fund before you put money in. Every row links back to the filing it came from.
Sources: SEC EDGAR
The best AI ETF is the one whose holdings survive a filing check.