{"id":767283,"date":"2026-06-28T18:44:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T18:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/767283\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T18:44:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T18:44:15","slug":"australian-with-retirement-savings-you-probably-own-spacex-superannuation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/767283\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian with retirement savings? You probably own SpaceX | Superannuation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Artificial intelligence and technology stocks have become a driving force on Wall Street and, unbeknownst to most Australians, a growing part of their retirement savings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The so-called \u201cmagnificent seven\u201d \u2013 chip maker Nvidia, Google owner Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook owner Meta and Tesla \u2013 are, for better or worse, increasingly part of the portfolios offered by superannuation funds.<\/p>\n

The average Australian super portfolio now has an estimated 12% of its investments in AI-related companies due to the massive growth of tech stocks in recent years, experts say.<\/p>\n

Many portfolios are even invested in Elon Musk\u2019s mission to Mars through SpaceX, according to the Association of Superannuation<\/a> Funds of Australia (Asfa).<\/p>\n

But SpaceX\u2019s recent launch on the US stock exchange<\/a> \u2013 coinciding with Anthropic and OpenAI\u2019s plans for their own public launches \u2013 has renewed questions around the ethics, risks and rewards of investing in AI.<\/p>\n

Why might you own SpaceX?<\/p>\n

Super funds invest a large proportion of members\u2019 savings outside of Australia to make the most of risk-adjusted returns that aren\u2019t available in the local market, Asfa chief executive officer, Mary Delahunty, says.<\/p>\n

When Australian super funds invest in international share markets, they often track global benchmark indices that are heavily weighted towards the US because it is the world\u2019s largest capital market.<\/p>\n

Delahunty says this strategy, along with \u201cbroadly diversified portfolios\u201d, had driven average returns in balanced funds of about 10% a year for the past three years.<\/p>\n

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Because global indices are dominated by the big US tech stocks, many Australians are shareholders in these companies through their super.<\/p>\n

But individual holdings are often quite small. Even though SpaceX made the world\u2019s largest stock market debut to date on 12 June, Morningstar senior principal, William Anglingdarma, says its immediate effect on Australian portfolios would be relatively modest.<\/p>\n

Asfa estimated the average Australians super fund member\u2019s exposure to SpaceX was about $50. Australian Retirement Trust (ART), one of the country\u2019s three biggest super funds, said theirs was about $15 per member.<\/p>\n

ART\u2019s head of investment strategy, Andrew Fisher, says the fund is ultimately focused on what would generate the biggest returns for its members.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew money doesn\u2019t get created,\u201d he says. \u201cOne of the areas \u2026 that we\u2019re going to be watching closely is if all this money goes to SpaceX or Anthropic or OpenAI, where does it come from?\u201d<\/p>\n

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Fisher says ART didn\u2019t have any \u201cstrong issues\u201d with investing in AI \u201cfrom an ethics point of view\u201d, noting that it had been one of the early financial backers of the data centre company AirTrunk.<\/p>\n

Australian Super and Aware Super did not respond to the Guardian\u2019s questions.<\/p>\n

\u2018Unavoidable\u2019 exposure raises questions of ethics<\/p>\n

The chief investment analyst at Wealth Within, Dale Gillham, says investment in AI raised a range of ethical issues relating to privacy, copyright infringement and labour displacement, as well as the enormous energy and infrastructure requirements.<\/p>\n

Speaking generally, Gillham says super funds may promote an environmental, social and governance (ESG) responsible investment policy while still holding shares in companies that members may consider unethical.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost Australians do not choose to invest in AI directly, yet their retirement savings are increasingly exposed to a small group of US technology companies,\u201d he says<\/p>\n

\u201cSuper funds need to be clear about where that exposure sits, how concentrated it is, and what ethical framework they apply.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, Gillham says the concentrating on tech stocks could put Australians at an \u201cunacceptably\u201d high financial risk.<\/p>\n

While the local tech sector makes up just 3% of the ASX, he says, a third of the US market is in tech stocks. The average holder of a balanced super fund in Australia may have between seven and 12% of their portfolio exposed to AI and big tech. If the US tech giants were to fall heavily, superannuation balances would fall too.<\/p>\n

Warwick Peel, a responsible AI expert and partner at Amrop Carmichael Fisher, says given exposure to AI was now \u201ccompletely unavoidable\u201d, super funds should \u201creally get deep in terms of what is responsible AI\u201d.<\/p>\n

Peel, who is part of a working group on an Asia-Pacific framework for investing in AI, says ideally the sector would generateenvironmental benefits and \u201csocial dividends\u201d as well as returns.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to get worse before it gets better,\u201d he says. \u201cHowever, I\u2019m an optimist and I honestly believe once we point these machines in the right direction, we\u2019ll be better placed to actually achieve \u2026 pro-social AI.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artificial intelligence and technology stocks have become a driving force on Wall Street and, unbeknownst to most Australians,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[45,49,48,133,131,132],"class_list":["post-767283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}