Defiance Launches an Autism ETF of Public Companies

What Defiance Launched

Defiance ETFs has put the autism economy on the stock exchange. The first week of June, the thematic-fund issuer launched the Defiance Autism Impact ETF, ticker ASD, which it bills as the first U.S.-listed fund built around an autism-focused index, with targeted exposure to public companies working on autism diagnostics, therapies, educational tools, assistive technology, and healthcare.

The fund tracks the VettaFi Autism Impact Index, a rules-based benchmark that VettaFi built and licenses to Defiance. It charges an expense ratio of 0.79%, a fee well above what a broad-market index fund costs, and it pledges its proceeds to the cause. Defiance has committed to donate 100% of the fund’s net advisory profits to autism nonprofits for its first two years, and at least 50% after that. The pledge sits at the adviser level and does not change the fund’s fees, the company said.

Defiance pitched the launch as both an investment and an act of advocacy. The idea came from founder and chief executive Matthew Bielski and general counsel Gabriella Zahn-Bielski, whose son has autism, according to chief investment officer Sylvia Jablonski.

“For many advisors and investors, autism is not an abstract concept.” – Sylvia Jablonski, CIO, Defiance ETFs (2026)

What the Fund Actually Holds

The holdings tell a more complicated story than the name. As of June 3, the index’s largest positions were BrightSpring Health Services, a home- and community-based health and pharmacy company; Maplight Therapeutics, a clinical-stage neuroscience drug developer; Jazz Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical firm; Revvity, a diagnostics and life-sciences company whose products include newborn and genetic screening; and Stride, an online education provider. Pharma, biotech, diagnostics, and ed-tech. Not one ABA clinic operator sits at the top of the fund.

That is not an oversight. It is the shape of the market. The businesses at the center of autism care, the ABA-therapy chains, are almost all privately held, most of them owned by private equity. Action Behavior Centers, one of the largest, belongs to Charlesbank Capital Partners; its peers sit inside other sponsors’ portfolios. Few pure-play ABA providers trade on a public exchange, so an index that wants public-market exposure to autism has to reach for the companies around the therapy: the drugmakers, the diagnostic labs, and the education platforms.

The VettaFi index is not blind to this. Its methodology sorts holdings into three pillars, and the first is behavioral therapeutics, which expressly covers clinical providers of applied behavior analysis, speech, and occupational therapy. The other two are diagnostics and assessment, and specialized education and educational technology. On paper, the ABA operators belong in the fund. In public markets, almost none of them are available to buy.

The businesses at the center of autism care are almost all private, so a public-market fund has to buy the companies around them.

The Pitch and the Price

Jablonski framed ASD as a bet on a long-term trend and what she called a potential trillion-dollar total addressable market, with interest already coming from pensions, endowments, and asset managers. The demand backdrop is real. Autism Speaks estimates that about 4 in 100 boys and 1 in 100 girls in the United States have autism, and roughly 1 in 45 adults.

The supply of thematic funds is real too. Defiance, founded in 2018, runs more than 75 ETFs and $13.4 billion in assets, much of it in leveraged and single-theme products like its quantum-computing and 5G funds. ASD arrives in the middle of an ETF boom: U.S. issuers brought a record 1,110 funds to market in 2025, by TD Securities’ count, and pulled in $1.48 trillion. A fund that is charitable, of the moment, and trades under the clinical acronym for the condition it targets is well suited to that environment.

Whether the theme draws lasting capital will show up in one number, the assets ASD gathers from a standing start. And the donation that gives the fund its conscience pays out only on profit, which the issuer cannot promise and which depends on those same assets.

AT A GLANCE

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