The new fund is a Luxembourg-domiciled SICAV.

AXA Investment Managers has launched the AXA World Funds Framlington Robotech Fund, to be managed by Tom Riley and Jeremy Gleeson, both lead fund managers at AXA IM.

The launch follows the success of a dedicated global robotics mandate for the Japanese retail market, which AXA IM launched in December 2015. This has seen its assets grow to approximately $1 billion to date. The new fund will be managed by the same team, following the same investment approach.

The managers will aim to invest in global growth companies spanning robotics and automation application areas including the industrial, technology, manufacturing, healthcare and transportation sectors.

“It is already an investable area from which we aim to select 40 to 60 fast growth companies to build a global portfolio diversified across market cap and sectors,” said Riley.

“We fundamentally believe you need an active manager to access new growth areas such as robotics - there is no broadly used standard robotics benchmark that you can try to replicate,” added Mark Beveridge, global head of framlington equities at AXA IM.

SICAV is a French acronym for “société d'investissement à capital variable” that can be translated as “investment company with variable capital”, and is a type of open-ended investment fund. The fund has both retail and institutional share classes and is registered for distribution in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK. Registration is expected for Switzerland in coming months.