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Intelligence as a Service

Historically, expertise has been expensive and hard to access. AI is changing that—hundreds of millions of people now carry a capable AI assistant in their pocket, available instantly at near-zero cost.

Access to expertise is usually constrained by time, cost, and geography. Figuring out which tax deductions you qualify for means scheduling an appointment with an accountant; diagnosing a broken dishwasher means waiting and paying for a technician. Artificial intelligence (AI) is dissolving some of these constraints and breaking down the information asymmetry. Today, hundreds of millions of people carry a highly capable AI assistant in their smartphone or computer—available instantly, around the clock, and at a negligible cost. We believe these dynamics point to an AI infrastructure buildout that is not a one-time cycle, but an ongoing structural shift driven by compounding demand.

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​​​​​​Chart showing Total AI Tokens Consumed Per Week (in Trillions)​​​​​​​
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  • AI models process information in “tokens”—small units of text that serve as the currency of AI interactions. Each query, response, and reasoning chain consumes tokens, making aggregate token volume a useful proxy for real-world AI adoption. To illustrate, we analyzed data from OpenRouter, a platform providing unified access to over 400 AI models. As shown above, weekly token consumption on OpenRouter reached approximately 20 trillion by mid-March 2026, more than a tenfold increase in one year. While precisely measuring total global token usage is challenging since not all companies disclose this information, we estimate that the annual total tokens processed globally could be approximately 100 quadrillion (1017).1
  • A key driver of the acceleration beginning in early 2025 was the emergence of agentic AI coding tools, sometimes called “vibe coding,” which enable users to describe software they want built in natural language and then AI autonomously writes, tests, and iterates on the code with minimal human intervention—essentially software that writes software (see also Software Explosion​). Beyond coding, everyday consumers are driving demand for all sorts of tasks, with over half of Americans aged 18-64 now using generative AI, saving an estimated 2% of total work hours.2 Underpinning both trends, research by Epoch AI estimates that since 2022, the cost to achieve a given level of AI performance has been falling by roughly 50x annually, which is enabling far more applications to become economically viable.3
  • Meanwhile, reasoning-optimized models, in which AI systems autonomously execute multi-step tasks, now account for more than half of all tokens processed on OpenRouter.4 In our view, intensifying demand for AI workloads requires sustained investment in GPUs, networking, and power solutions, and we believe companies positioned across the AI infrastructure value chain may stand to benefit from this long-term structural tailwind.

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1Frank Nagle and Daniel Yue, "The Latent Role of Open Models in the AI Economy," as reported in Brian Eastwood, "AI open models have benefits. So why aren't they more widely used?," MIT Sloan School of Management, January 20, 2026. It has been reported that OpenRouter captures approximately 1% of all global spending on AI model inference. OpenRouter processes approximately 1 quadrillion tokens annually; extrapolating from this suggests total global token volume could be on the order of 100 quadrillion.

2Alex Bick, Adam Blandin, David Deming, and Nathalie Gazzaneo, "Generative AI Adoption Tracker," Harvard Project on Workforce / Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis / Vanderbilt University, November 2025.

3Ben Cottier, Ben Snodin, David Owen, and Tom Adamczewski, "LLM inference prices have fallen rapidly but unequally across tasks," Epoch AI, March 2025.

4Malika Aubakirova, Alex Atallah, Chris Clark, Justin Summerville, and Anjney Midha, "State of AI: An Empirical 100 Trillion Token Study with OpenRouter," OpenRouter/a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), December 2025.

The views expressed are the views of Fred Alger Management, LLC (“FAM”) and its affiliates as of March 2026. These views are subject to change at any time and may not represent the views of all portfolio management teams. These views should not be interpreted as a guarantee of the future performance of the markets, any security or any funds managed by FAM. These views are not meant to provide investment advice and should not be considered a recommendation to purchase or sell securities.

Risk Disclosures: Investing in the stock market involves risks, including the potential loss of principal. Growth stocks may be more volatile than other stocks as their prices tend to be higher in relation to their companies’ earnings and may be more sensitive to market, political, and economic developments. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Investors whose reference currency differs from that in which the underlying assets are invested may be subject to exchange rate movements that alter the value of their investments. Companies involved in, or exposed to, AI-related businesses may have limited product lines, markets, financial resources or personnel as they face intense competition and potentially rapid product obsolescence, and many depend significantly on retaining and growing their consumer base. These companies may be substantially exposed to the market and business risks of other industries or sectors, and may be adversely affected by negative developments impacting those companies, industries or sectors, as well as by loss or impairment of intellectual property rights or misappropriation of their technology. Companies that utilize AI could face reputational harm, competitive harm, and legal liability, and/or an adverse effect on business operations as content, analyses, or recommendations that AI applications produce may be deficient, inaccurate, biased, misleading or incomplete, may lead to errors, and may be used in negligent or criminal ways. AI technology could face increasing regulatory scrutiny in the future, which may limit the development of this technology and impede the future growth. AI companies, especially smaller companies, tend to be more volatile than companies that do not rely heavily on technology.

Important Information for US Investors: This material must be accompanied by the most recent fund fact sheet(s) if used in connection with the sale of mutual fund and ETF shares. Fred Alger & Company, LLC serves as distributor of the Alger mutual funds and ETFs.

​Important Information for UK and EU Investors: This material is directed at investment professionals and qualified investors (as defined by MiFID/FCA regulations). It is for information purposes only and has been prepared and is made available for the benefit investors. This material does not constitute an offer or solicitation to any person in any jurisdiction in which it is not authorized or permitted, or to anyone who would be an unlawful recipient, and is only intended for use by original recipients and addressees. The original recipient is solely responsible for any actions in further distributing this material and should be satisfied in doing so that there is no breach of local legislation or regulation.

Alger Management, Ltd. (company house number 8634056, domiciled at 85 Gresham Street, Suite 308, London EC2V 7NQ, UK) is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, for the distribution of regulated financial products and services. FAM, Weatherbie Capital, LLC, and/or Redwood Investments, LLC, U.S. registered investment advisors, serve as sub-portfolio manager to financial products distributed by Alger Management, Ltd.

Alger Group Holdings, LLC (parent company of FAM and Alger Management, Ltd.), FAM, and Fred Alger & Company, LLC are not authorized persons for the purposes of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 of the United Kingdom (“FSMA”) and this material has not been approved by an authorized person for the purposes of Section 21(2)(b) of the FSMA.

Important information for Investors in Israel: Fred Alger Management, LLC is neither licensed nor insured under the Israeli Regulation of Investment Advice, of Investment Marketing, and of Portfolio Management Law, 1995 (the "Investment Advice Law"). This document is for information purposes only and should not be construed as an offering of Investment Advisory, Investment Marketing or Portfolio Management services (As defined in the Investment Advice Law). Services regulated under the Investment Advice Law are only available to investors that fall within the First Schedule of Investment Advice Law ("Qualified Clients"). It is hereby noted that with respect to Qualified Clients, Fred Alger Management, LLC is not obliged to comply with the following requirements of the Investment Advice Law: (1) ensuring the compatibility of service to the needs of client; (2) engaging in a written agreement with the client, the content of which is as described in section 13 of the Investment Advice Law; (3) providing the client with appropriate disclosure regarding all matters that are material to a proposed transaction or to the advice given; (4) a prohibition on preferring certain Securities or other Financial Assets; (5) providing disclosure about "extraordinary risks" entailed in a transaction (and obtaining the client's approval of such transactions, if applicable); (6) a prohibition on making Portfolio Management fees conditional upon profits or number of transactions; (7) maintaining records of advisory/discretionary actions. This document is directed at and intended for Qualified Clients only.

OpenRouter is an AI infrastructure platform providing APIs that facilitate access to various large language models.
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Alger pays compensation to third party marketers to sell various strategies to prospective investors.

Fred Alger & Company, LLC​ 100 Pearl Street, New York, NY 10004 / www.alger.com / 212-806-8800

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Traditional ETFs tell the public what assets they hold each day. This ETF will not. This may create additional risks for your investment. Specifically:

You may have to pay more money to trade the ETF’s shares. This ETF will provide less information to traders, who tend to charge more for trades when they have less information.

The price you pay to buy ETF shares on an exchange may not match the value of the ETF’s portfolio. The same is true when you sell shares. These price differences may be greater for this ETF compared to other ETFs because it provides less information to traders.

These additional risks may be even greater in bad or uncertain market conditions.

The differences between this ETF and other ETFs may also have advantages. By keeping certain information about the ETF confidential, this ETF may face less risk that other traders can predict or copy its investment strategy. This may improve the ETF’s performance. If other traders are able to copy or predict the ETF’s investment strategy, however, this may hurt the ETF’s performance. For additional information regarding the unique attributes and risks of this ETF, please refer to the prospectus.

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