In the lead up to the SpaceX IPO, there were dozens of stories about early employees and investors who stood to make millions of dollars for betting on, or working for, Elon Musk.

But thanks to Musk’s work with DOGE, his public comments on X, and the infamous gesture he made at Donald Trump’s inauguration that looked a lot like a Nazi salute, someone realized there was money to be made by avoiding him.

An exchanged-traded fund creator with the appropo name of Subversive Capital has found a way to tap into that negative sentiment with two new anti-Elon exchanged-traded funds.

The ETFs, which are similar to mutual funds, except they are traded like regular stocks, are legally registered by Tidal Trust I and attached to a brand called Subversive Markets Lab LLC. (Bloomberg was the first to spot the filing.)

Avoiding the world’s richest person can be tricky for the average investor, who likely puts their money into mutual funds tied to indices like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100. SpaceX, which is in the FTSE Russell and MSCI indexes, was recently added to the Nasdaq 100. That means it’s included in funds that track those indexes. Musk’s other publicly traded company, Tesla, is a longtime favorite of mutual funds, especially the large cap and growth varieties.

The two newly registered ETFs, named Nasdaq-100 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF and S&P 500 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF, are designed to block these companies. As of the date of the prospectus, the excluded enterprises are Tesla (TSLA) and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX), the filing states. Musk’s other companies, including Neuralink and The Boring Company are not publicly traded.

It is possible that the Ex-Elon funds may exclude other companies that become closely associated with the near-trillionaire, too. The Ex-Elon funds seek “to provide capital appreciation through exposure to a broad universe of large-capitalization U.S. equity securities, while excluding the equity securities of companies that are founded, controlled, or led by Elon Musk, or with which Mr. Musk is otherwise primarily associated,” so the document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reads. 

While these are legit funds that investors will soon be able to trade, there’s also more than a bit of tongue and cheek going on. Prior to the Ex-Elon funds, Subversive earned headlines for its other ETFs that promise to let regular folks “invest like the oligarchy.” One of those funds holds stocks known to be traded by Democratic members of Congress and their spouses, and the other mirrors those held by the Republican side of the aisle.  

It’s too early to say if investors will pile into these Ex-Elon ETFs, which have the tickers QQNE and SPNE, or if they will perform better than funds that include Musk’s companies. But they do reflect a growing appetite for ways to avoid Musk, and, given his famed hostility to traders who shorted Tesla, perhaps even annoy him a little.  

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft was replacing some of OpenAI’s software with its own in-house models in an effort to cut costs. Those in-house models, known as MAI, were increasingly being used to power apps like Word and Excel, the outlet noted.

The story raised an increasingly common question about the two companies, which were once seemingly inseparable, and have recently sent mixed signals about the status of their situationship: Were the two companies drifting apart?

Now, OpenAI is attempting to put any insinuations of such a break to rest. During OpenAI’s launch of GPT 5.6 on Thursday, the company announced that it would become the “preferred model” powering Microsoft’s 365 Copilot.

OpenAI noted in a blog post published Thursday that GPT 5.6 would support Microsoft users across the company’s suite of productivity apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Cowork.

“Our partnership with Microsoft has always been about bringing the benefits of advanced AI to more individuals and organizations, and we’re excited to continue building on that shared commitment,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post.

What being a “preferred model” actually means isn’t entirely clear, other than that OpenAI’s software will continue to power Microsoft’s apps.

That said, it was never reported that ChatGPT’s software would stop powering Microsoft’s apps — merely that Microsoft was relying increasingly on its own software in an effort to reduce costs. The new “preferred model” disclosure doesn’t appear to negate that previous reporting.