TTEQ nearly doubles assets as investors pour in $189 million

T. Rowe Price's actively managed technology ETF has nearly doubled in size over three months. Investors put just under $189 million into TTEQ, according to ETF Database data cited by ETF Trends. That inflow lifted assets to $429 million. The fund entered the period with roughly $238 million, so the growth is mostly new money; appreciation played a minor role. A 32.9% year-to-date return helped draw the money, but demand for active tech did the rest.

TTEQ charges 63 basis points, well above what broad tech index funds ask. The fee buys a global large-cap mandate that can hold technology-driven companies outside the passive benchmarks. Manager Dom Rizzo and his team pick stocks through fundamental valuation work rather than index construction. ETF Trends reports the fund has beaten its benchmark this year. The brief is specific: find technology companies that are growing, even if they sit outside the sector's usual borders.

Sixty-three basis points is not cheap. Against a beaten benchmark, the 32.9% return changes the calculation. Investors are paying the fee for that outperformance, and the money keeps coming.

The most unusual holding sits outside the public market. According to ETF Trends, TTEQ has put money into OpenAI through a private allocation ahead of its IPO, something no passive tech fund can do. That gives the fund a venture-style position most ETFs cannot reach, along with a valuation quirk. Private shares are priced by the holder, not by an exchange, so the fund's NAV leans on a manager's estimate. Investors should watch how that estimate moves as the stake changes.

The OpenAI stake tests the limits of the ETF wrapper. Private positions don't trade second by second, and they aren't easy to deliver into a redemption basket. Rizzo's team has to put a price on something the market cannot price, then let that estimate feed the intraday NAV. It's workable, but it shows active ETFs can own assets index funds would never touch. The flexibility runs in both directions.

TTEQ is no Nasdaq 100 proxy. The index remains the default way many investors buy tech, but it is a cap-weighted basket of the biggest growth companies, loaded with names that are technology-adjacent rather than pure technology. TTEQ makes a narrower, explicit bet on tech, with a manager free to step outside the index when the opportunity appears. Sector labels matter less than fundamental conviction.

Rizzo's team hunts for companies where research shows growth the market has not appreciated, not simply index weight. A holding can therefore carry a label outside its official sector if technology drives the economics. The OpenAI stake is the extreme example; the everyday work is more conventional. That willingness to leave the index is why the fee exists.

TTEQ is the technology leg of T. Rowe Price's active sector lineup. A day earlier, ETF Daily covered TMED, the firm's 44-basis-point active health-care fund, which was beating its benchmark by wide margins. Both run the same playbook: fundamental research, a focused sector mandate, and a fee that gives active managers room to work. The money moving into TTEQ says investors will pay for that room in tech.

The flows fit a broader pattern. Fidelity's FBCG, a blue-chip growth fund, has taken in $1 billion this year, according to ETF Daily's earlier coverage. The fund has crossed $7 billion in assets. Investors are paying for stock-picking in the space once dominated by the Mag Seven. TTEQ's 63-basis-point fee is the explicit price; the implicit price is capacity. The more money arrives, the harder it gets to keep the flexibility that draws it.

The pace of inflows brings the capacity question into focus. At $429 million, TTEQ can still move in and out of names with ease. But $189 million in three months is the sort of absorption that shrinks the opportunity set, especially in less-liquid technology stocks. If the pace continued, the fund would pass $1 billion within a year. At that scale, a pre-IPO OpenAI stake becomes a larger slice of the portfolio, and the discipline behind its pricing matters more.

The near-doubling also shows the practical advantage of the ETF wrapper: the ticker is the product, and the money can come from anywhere. A mutual fund that took in $189 million in a quarter would need a wholesaling army; TTEQ's growth speaks for itself.

The next quarter will show whether the strategy can hold when tech's run cools. For now, investors are paying for active tech, and the manager is delivering. Scale will test the fee, the capacity, and the private-market quirks.