Two New ETFs Are Built Around One Rule: No Elon Musk

Subversive Capital has registered two exchange-traded funds designed to do something most index products cannot: give investors broad U.S. large-cap exposure while cutting out any company tied to Elon Musk.

The funds, named the Nasdaq-100 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF and the S&P 500 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF, trade under the tickers QQNE and SPNE. According to the prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, they aim to deliver capital appreciation across a wide pool of large-cap U.S. equities while excluding shares of companies "founded, controlled, or led by Elon Musk, or with which Mr. Musk is otherwise primarily associated." Bloomberg was first to spot the filing.

As of the prospectus date, the excluded companies are Tesla (TSLA) and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX). The filing leaves room to add more names later if other firms become closely linked to Musk. His privately held ventures, including Neuralink and The Boring Company, are not traded and therefore fall outside the funds' scope.

Why exclusion is harder than it sounds

Avoiding Musk-linked stocks is not straightforward for a typical retail investor. Most people hold money in funds tracking benchmarks like the S&P 500 or Nasdaq-100, and both of Musk's public companies now sit inside those indexes. SpaceX is included in the FTSE Russell and MSCI indexes and was recently added to the Nasdaq-100, following the company's IPO. Tesla has been a staple of large-cap and growth mutual funds for years.

That structural presence is the gap the Ex-Elon funds are trying to fill. Rather than asking investors to build a custom portfolio, the products replicate mainstream index exposure minus the Musk names, turning a values-based preference into a single tradable ticker.

A firm with a track record of thematic bets

Subversive Capital, legally registered through Tidal Trust I and tied to a brand called Subversive Markets Lab LLC, has built earlier products around similar hooks. It previously drew attention for ETFs marketed as a way for ordinary investors to "invest like the oligarchy," including one fund that mirrors stocks traded by Democratic members of Congress and their spouses, and another that tracks holdings on the Republican side.

The Ex-Elon products fit that pattern. They are legitimate, tradable funds, but the branding carries an obvious edge. The pitch leans on negative sentiment that built up around Musk through his work with DOGE, his commentary on X, and the gesture at Donald Trump's inauguration that many read as a Nazi salute.

What is not yet known

It is too early to say whether investors will move capital into QQNE and SPNE, or whether the funds will outperform products that keep Musk's companies. Excluding two names from an index can create tracking differences in either direction, depending on how Tesla and SpaceX perform relative to the broader market.

What the launch does signal is demand for tools that let investors opt out of a single high-profile figure. Given Musk's documented hostility toward traders who shorted Tesla, the funds may also carry a secondary appeal for buyers who want to register a stance as much as a position.