Daniel Petre’s Savana backing puts machine-led active ETFs under the spotlight

Airtree Ventures co-founder Daniel Petre is investing some of his personal wealth in Savana Active ETFs, according to an October 18, 2026 report by the Australian Financial Review’s Street Talk column. The investment valued Savana at $20 million, while early backers Riverbend Investments and Centrestone Capital also increased their existing stakes.

The transaction is notable less for its size than for what it says about the ambitions of a small Australian fund manager operating at the intersection of quantitative investing, artificial intelligence and the rapidly expanding exchange-traded fund market.

Savana was founded by Stephen Duchesne, a former Merrill Lynch banker, and John Atkinson. Its investment process uses machine intelligence and proprietary valuation models rather than relying solely on traditional analyst teams. The company says its systems can assess about 60,000 listed companies each day, searching for cases where market prices have diverged materially from underlying fundamentals.

The strategy is represented on the ASX by the Savana US Small Caps Active ETF, traded under the ticker SVNP. The fund invests in US small-cap and mid-cap companies and aims to outperform the S&P Small Cap 600 Total Return Index after fees over a medium- to long-term investment horizon.

That structure gives Savana exposure to two investment trends at once. US small caps offer a broad universe of companies that may receive less research coverage than mega-cap stocks, while the active ETF format gives Australian investors an exchange-traded way to access a systematic strategy. Savana’s strategy was implemented on the ASX on November 6, 2024, although the fund itself dates back to January 21, 2022, when it operated under a different name and strategy.

Street Talk reported that SVNP had returned 11.96 per cent a year after fees since inception as at September 30, 2026, outperforming the S&P Small Cap 600 benchmark by 7.9 percentage points. Those results provide an important commercial argument for Savana as it seeks to build credibility with investors and compete against much larger ETF providers such as Betashares and BlackRock’s iShares.

The distinction between fund inception and strategy inception is important when interpreting performance figures. Savana’s public fund materials identify January 2022 as the fund’s inception date but November 2024 as the start of the current US small-caps strategy. Investors comparing performance data therefore need to check which period and methodology are being used.

The ASX’s September 2026 investment-products report also shows the scale challenge. SVNP had funds under management of A$6.71 million at the end of the month, with a monthly increase of A$0.47 million and monthly fund inflows of A$0.84 million. The report recorded A$2.22 million in inflows over the previous 12 months, alongside a one-month total return of negative 5.77 per cent and a one-year return of 13.03 per cent.

Trading activity was meaningful but still modest compared with established ETF franchises. The September report recorded A$1.22 million in value traded, 687,365 units traded and 88 transactions. It also showed monthly liquidity of 18.13 per cent and an average spread of 0.55 per cent, metrics that matter for investors assessing how easily units can be bought or sold.

Petre’s backing reflects a familiar technology-sector thesis: software can make a process more scalable by reducing dependence on a large, highly paid human workforce. Savana’s model is designed to apply the same valuation framework across a much broader company universe than a conventional small research team could monitor continuously.

That does not make the process risk-free. Savana’s own materials identify active-management risk, market risk, currency risk, concentration risk, liquidity risk and model risk. A rules-based process can be systematic without being infallible, particularly when market conditions change or when the factors embedded in a model stop being rewarded.

The current portfolio also illustrates why implementation matters. Savana’s fund page identifies US-listed holdings across sectors including financials, communication services, industrials, information technology and health care. The result is not simply a technology product; it is an actively managed portfolio whose outcome depends on security selection, position sizing, currency movements and trading conditions.