S&P 500 Index ETF Assets Top $1 Trillion for First Time, Vanguard VOO Sets Global Record

TradingKey - On June 3rd, Eastern Time, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF ( VOO) saw its assets under management (AUM) surpass $1 trillion, becoming the world's first ETF to reach the trillion-dollar milestone and setting a new record for the passive investment industry.

The ETF's expense ratio is 0.03%, significantly lower than its competitors. The core reasons for the substantial growth in VOO's scale are the AI investment boom in U.S. stocks and the continuous global shift of capital toward low-cost passive products.

Launched in 2010, VOO is Vanguard's core broad-based ETF. According to Morningstar data, the ETF saw net inflows of over $69 billion in the first five months of this year, setting a historical record for a single ETF product.

Analysts point out that as the S&P 500 shortens the waiting period for including new stocks from 12 months to 6 months, and with Nasdaq implementing new rules for rapid IPO inclusion in its indices, a large amount of passive capital will be directed toward high-profile upcoming listings, including SpaceX and Anthropic. Once these two companies complete their IPOs and are quickly included in mainstream indices, trillion-dollar passive funds represented by VOO will increase their holdings according to the rules, bringing significant incremental buying power.

A Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst stated: "In the past, a stock had to wait a year to enter the S&P 500, causing many passive funds to miss out on early gains. Under the new rules, once star companies like SpaceX go public, they could receive allocations from index funds in as little as six months."

Founded in 1975 by John Bogle, Vanguard employs a unique mutual ownership structure where fund holders are the company's shareholders, and profits are returned to investors in the form of lower expense ratios.

As of the end of the first quarter of 2026, Vanguard's global assets under management reached approximately $12.32 trillion. The company has reshaped the global fund industry landscape with its low-fee index investing and, along with BlackRock and State Street, is known as one of the "Big Three" U.S. asset managers.