Key Points
- Engagement means using one’s ownership stake in a company to push for better practices through dialogue, votes, and accountability.
- This quarter, our engagement stories focus on Artificial Intelligence and the value questions it raises.
- Each engagement story comes directly from the asset manager behind your portfolio, sharing the work they’re doing to hold companies to a higher standard.
- We’re evolving from annual impact reports to quarterly engagement stories, giving you a more timely and specific view of your investments.
- Each model portfolio has its own story. Find yours below and reach out to your advisor with any questions.
Introducing Our Quarterly Engagement Stories
At Abacus, we’ve always believed that knowing where your money goes matters. For years, that’s meant reporting back to our clients on how their investments hold up against their values. We’re committed to offering values-aligned investments alongside holistic financial planning, and as an impact-driven firm, we seek to walk the talk.
In the spirit of continuous improvement, we’ve evolved that practice into something more timely and more connected to the issues unfolding in the world around us.
What’s Changing and Why
Starting this quarter, rather than releasing an annual impact report for each model portfolio, we’re sharing quarterly engagement stories. Each quarter, we’ll ask our asset manager partners to report on the values-aligned engagement work they’re doing with the companies under the hood of your investment funds. Depending on your portfolio, that means anywhere from roughly 800 to 11,000 underlying companies.
We want to know, on a regular basis, how the fund managers use their leverage to hold companies to a higher standard. That means pushing on issues like climate action, human rights, and fair wages. As a B Corp investment advisory firm, we are deeply committed to these issues, and to nudging the broader investment industry to offer more rigorous, values-driven options.
When we talk about engagement in these investment portfolios, or active ownership, we mean the work asset managers do to influence company behavior on your behalf. That can look like formal dialogue with company leadership, filing or voting on shareholder resolutions, or escalating pressure, including through wider coalitions, when companies fall short of their commitments. It’s one of the most direct levers stock market investors have for pushing companies to act more responsibly and it’s work that happens largely behind the scenes.
This Quarter’s Theme: Artificial Intelligence
This quarter, we’re focusing on one of the most talked-about topics in investing right now: Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The scale of AI investment is staggering. As the New York Times reported last December, “by one measure, more than 90 percent of economic growth in the first half of 2025 came from investments in computer equipment and software, which economists chalk up to projects linked to the rush to build data centers and remain in the AI race.”
At the same time, local communities and governments are grappling with what guardrails, if any, should exist. What are the energy needs of these data centers? What happens to local water supplies? How will they impact other resources? How will they impact public safety?
These are not only financial questions, but also environmental and social ones. So we asked our asset manager partners to share how they’re approaching values-aligned investing with respect to AI.
Below you’ll find an engagement story for each of our three model portfolios. Find the one that corresponds to your portfolio and see what your asset manager has been doing on your behalf.
Not sure which portfolio you’re invested in? Reach out to your Abacus advisor; they’ll point you in the right direction. And if you’re curious about our other portfolios, we encourage you to read those stories, too. The work across all three reflects the values at the heart of what your money does at Abacus.
Portfolio Engagement Stories
The Abacus Sustainable Model Portfolio
Tracking AI’s Energy Footprint
Every Google search, ChatGPT prompt, or AI-generated image draws from a power grid somewhere. As artificial intelligence becomes part of daily life, the energy behind it is growing fast, and it’s starting to show up in the data.
Dimensional, one of the asset managers we use in our Sustainable Portfolio, seeks to reduce carbon-footprint exposure by excluding or limiting investments in companies that produce large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions or that hold significant fossil fuel reserves. They measure this by looking at a company’s emissions relative to its sales.
One important piece of that picture is tracking the emissions tied to the energy a company purchases, in addition to what it produces directly. This is called Scope 2 emissions. So whether a company is powering a warehouse or training an AI model, that energy use shows up in its reported Scope 2 emissions data.
AI is changing the scale of that equation quickly, and Dimensional is paying attention. They’re working with leading academics to understand how AI is reshaping energy demand for companies in this portfolio, and how that shift shows up in emissions reporting.
They’re also researching the growing connection between AI data centers and the power demands they require. It’s still early, and the landscape is moving fast, but we’re pleased to report that Dimensional is taking a proactive and research-driven approach to understanding and managing the carbon-related risks of AI’s growing footprint.
The Abacus ESG Model Portfolio
Holding Hyperscalers Accountable
In recent years, some of the world’s largest technology companies like Microsoft, Google, and Meta made bold public commitments to carbon neutrality. Then AI arrived and the race to build the infrastructure to support it has put many of those commitments under strain.
The companies at the center of this are known as hyperscalers. These companies are investing enormous amounts of money into building and expanding data centers that power advanced AI. The energy and water demands of those facilities are significant and growing. And for many of these companies, the financial pull of AI expansion is creating a quiet retreat from the environmental targets they once championed.
Nuveen, one of the asset managers we use in our ESG portfolio, is in active conversation with these companies, pressing on questions of energy sourcing, resource use, and whether their stated environmental targets are actually being upheld. The goal is to continue to advance these conversations and hold companies accountable to the climate commitments they have already made publicly.
The Abacus Social Justice Model Portfolio
Evaluating AI Through a Social Justice Lens
Adasina, one of the asset managers used in our Social Justice Portfolio, doesn’t take a position on AI itself. What they evaluate is whether companies violate their social justice criteria, and whether doing so causes harm to the communities those criteria are designed to protect.
Palantir, for instance, has been excluded from this portfolio. Its AI-enabled surveillance systems are actively used by ICE agents to track and locate individuals in support of deportation efforts, a direct conflict with Adasina’s social justice criteria. Additionally, the Magnificent 7, the cohort of tech giants most associated with AI, are largely absent from this portfolio as well. This is not because of AI, but because of a range of social justice violations that disqualify them under Adasina’s framework.
NVIDIA, on the other hand, currently remains in the portfolio. It develops the computing chips that make AI possible, but its core business isn’t surveillance, and it doesn’t cross those same lines.
What this reflects is a deliberate company-by-company evaluation of who benefits and who bears the cost, applied across the portfolio.
Let’s Keep the Conversation Going
These engagement stories reflect one of the ways Abacus works to help ensure your investments reflect your societal values. We hope they give you a clearer window into the work happening on your behalf. If you have questions about your portfolio or anything you read, please reach out to your Abacus advisor directly. They’re here to help make sense of it all.
Not yet an Abacus Wealth Partners client? If these stories sparked your curiosity about values-aligned investing, we’d love to connect. Explore how we can help, our investment approach and holistic financial planning services, or schedule a call to get in touch with our team.
Together, let’s continue to expand what’s possible with money.
Frequently Asked Questions
I’m not sure which portfolio I’m invested in. How do I find out?
The easiest way is to log into your Abacus client portal or reach out to your Abacus advisor. They can confirm which model portfolio your investments are in and point you to the corresponding engagement story.
Why is there a separate story for each portfolio?
Each of our three model portfolios are made up of underlying funds that are managed by different asset managers, and each asset manager takes its own approach to values-aligned investing. Rather than combining them into one summary, we want to give each manager the space to share their work and give you a clearer picture of how they approach engagement and what’s happening inside your investments.
Will there be a new engagement story every quarter?
Yes. Starting this quarter, we’ll be releasing engagement stories four times a year. Each quarter may feature a different impact theme, giving you a regular and evolving view of how your investments are responding to various topics.
Will every quarterly story cover the same theme across all three portfolios?
Not necessarily. This quarter all three stories share the same theme, Artificial Intelligence, but future quarters may vary depending on what issues are most pressing and what engagement work our asset managers are doing at the time.
What is an asset manager and why do they matter?
An asset manager is the firm responsible for selecting and managing the individual investments inside an investment fund. At Abacus, we design portfolios made up of intentionally curated funds, partnering with asset managers who share our commitment to values-aligned investing. That means they don’t just pick stocks, they actively engage with companies to push for higher standards on issues like climate, human rights, and fair labor practices.
I have more questions. Who should I contact?
If you have any questions you can reach out to your Abacus advisor. They’re your best first point of contact for anything related to your portfolio.
Disclosure
Clients utilizing responsible investing strategies and environment, social responsibility, and corporate governance (ESG) factors may underperform strategies that do not utilize such considerations. Responsible investing and ESG strategies may operate by either excluding the investments of certain issuers or by selecting investments based on their compliance with factors such as ESG. These strategies may exclude certain securities, issuers, sectors, or industries from a client’s portfolio, potentially negatively affecting the client’s investment performance if an excluded security, issuer, sector, or industry outperforms. Responsible investing and ESG are subjective by nature, and Abacus may rely on rankings, ratings, scores, and other analytic metrics provided by third parties in determining whether an issuer meets Abacus’ standards for inclusion or exclusion. A client’s perception may differ from that of Abacus or a third party on how to judge an issuer’s adherence to responsible investing principles. Investments are subject to risk, and any of Abacus’ investment strategies may lose money.
