When generative artificial intelligence (AI) began to gain scale in mid-2023, Banco Safra realized that the technology would be a game-changer in virtually every industry and began structuring the country's first fund focused on this thesis.
Given this, in March 2024, Safra's asset management arm launched Safra Artificial Intelligence (Safra IA), a multi-market fund for those who wanted to "get their feet wet" on the AI thesis, a vehicle for investors who wish to be exposed to the growth of the technology without betting on a single company or technology.
What started as a gamble ended up becoming one of the best-performing products on the Brazilian market, at a time when traditional multi-market funds have been struggling. Since its inception, the Safra IA fund has delivered a return of 136.38%. As a percentage of the CDI (Brazilian interbank deposit rate) for the period, the increase reaches 446.4%, riding the wave of appreciation driven by AI in international markets.
Instead of focusing on one big name in the sector, the fund invests in companies across the entire AI ecosystem, seeking to capture value throughout the technology's production chain, without concentrating on any specific name, with a maximum exposure of 5%.
The portfolio comprises companies ranging from chip manufacturers like TSMC and data center equipment vendors like Dell , to AI infrastructure software providers such as Datadog, Cloudflare, and Snowflake. In other words, anyone with a foothold in the AI supply chain is in the managers' sights.
Due to the results it has obtained, the institution plans to expand its range of investments, according to NeoFeed , with products related to AI, including this year, with more specialized strategies.
The assessment is that AI is creating a new industry and that there is an opportunity to capture gains from different points in the ecosystem and serve customers according to their different risk appetites.
One of the first launches was a fund to address the "bottlenecks" of AI. Named Explorer, the vehicle was created in the middle of last year, but opened for investments by Safra clients at the end of 2025, focusing on "concentrated opportunities".
Unlike Safra IA, which seeks diversification, Explorer looks for the best ideas and the main "bottlenecks" in the ecosystem. Currently, according to sources consulted by NeoFeed , the fund is heavily exposed to the data center processing memory and AI segment.
He has a concentrated portfolio, holding between five and ten positions, with the team able to allocate 20%, 30% or more of the assets to a single investment thesis when identifying an opportunity considered asymmetrical. Since its launch, it has yielded a return of 52.09%, or 238.3% above the CDI (Brazilian interbank deposit rate).
These two funds join a vehicle structured by the bank to invest exclusively in Nvidia . The Safra Nvidia Plus fund recorded a nominal return of 42.2% over the last 12 months, according to the May report.
As part of its strategy to expand its offering to include investments in AI, Safra also structured a pension fund that replicates the Safra AI thesis within the regulatory limits of the modality, with 40% allocated to AI.
Launched a month ago, the product has already raised around R$200 million, and the bank is considering structuring at least one more. The new products are intended to complement the portfolio of AI funds developed by the asset manager since 2024, which have already reached around R$2 billion in assets, according to sources consulted by the report.
