Opened a new position in Amesite Inc — ticker AMST — in the Trading 212 SIPP today. This is an odd one for me, and I want to be upfront about that from the start. If you've been following along, you'll know my comfort zone is well-established: broad index ETFs (VUAG, VWRP), mega-cap tech (Meta), global consumer brands (Starbucks), entertainment franchises (Take-Two). Amesite is none of those things. It's a tiny AI SaaS company with a market cap that could fit inside Meta's quarterly coffee budget. So why buy it?
── What Is Amesite? ──
Amesite is a US-listed company that provides an AI-powered software-as-a-service platform for education, training, and professional development. Think of it as an enterprise learning platform with artificial intelligence baked in from the ground up — not a legacy LMS (learning management system) with AI features bolted on as an afterthought. They serve universities, businesses, and government agencies, delivering online courses, professional certifications, and compliance training through a platform that uses AI to personalise the learning experience.
The core proposition: better learning outcomes through AI-driven personalisation. The platform adapts to how individual users learn, recommends content based on performance and engagement patterns, and automates a lot of the administrative overhead that traditional learning platforms require from instructors. For universities trying to scale online programmes, or businesses trying to upskill workforces efficiently, that's a meaningful value proposition.
── Why I'm Interested ──
A few reasons. First: the education and corporate training market is enormous — hundreds of billions globally — and it's still in the early stages of digital transformation. COVID accelerated the shift to online learning, but the tools most institutions are using are clunky, dated, and not built for the AI era. There's a genuine opportunity for a nimble, AI-native platform to take share from legacy incumbents.
Second: Amesite is small enough that a few decent contract wins could be transformational. We're not talking about a company that needs to sign every Fortune 500 firm to justify its valuation. A handful of university partnerships or government training contracts could meaningfully move the revenue needle. That's the double-edged sword of micro-cap investing — high upside, high risk — and I'm going in with that clearly understood.
Third: the AI angle is real, not a buzzword. Amesite has been building AI into its platform for years — well before ChatGPT made 'AI' a mandatory slide in every corporate pitch deck. Their approach to adaptive learning, content recommendation, and automated assessment feels substantive rather than cosmetic. Whether that translates into commercial success is the open question, but the technology foundation appears credible.
── The Risks (And There Are Many) ──
Let me be crystal clear about what I'm getting into here. Amesite is a micro-cap stock. It's illiquid — the share price can move sharply on small volumes. The company is not profitable. Revenue is modest and lumpy — a few contract wins can make a quarter, and a few delays can break one. Competition is fierce — the edtech space is crowded with well-funded startups, established players like Coursera and Udemy, and deep-pocketed incumbents like Workday and Oracle who are adding AI features to their own platforms. There's no economic moat — if a larger competitor decides to build what Amesite has built, they could do it with more resources and an existing customer base.
There's also the very real risk that this simply doesn't work out — that Amesite never achieves the scale needed to become sustainably profitable, that the contracts don't materialise, that the technology gets commoditised before the company can build a defensible position. In the worst case, the position goes to zero. I'm not being dramatic — that is a genuine possibility with micro-cap stocks, and I've sized the position accordingly.
── Position Sizing Is Everything ──
This is the smallest position in my SIPP by a meaningful margin. I'm not betting the farm. I'm not even betting the vegetable patch. This is a tiny speculative allocation — the equivalent of what I might spend on a weekend away, converted into shares in a company I find interesting and want to follow. If it goes to zero, I'll be annoyed but not materially impacted. If it works — if Amesite grows into a meaningful player in the AI-enabled education space — the return could be disproportionate to the initial outlay.
That's the 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' philosophy in practice. The bulk of my portfolio sits in broad index funds doing the heavy lifting. A few satellite positions — Meta, Starbucks, Take-Two, Coinbase — provide exposure to individual businesses I believe in. And a tiny sliver sits in speculative names like Amesite, where the upside is uncertain but the potential is real. The key is keeping the speculative sliver small enough that it can't do damage.
── Why Write About It? ──
I could have bought this quietly and never mentioned it. But that's not what this page is for. The whole point of the 'What I Bought' diary is to share what I'm actually doing with my own money — the mainstream buys and the oddballs, the core holdings and the speculative punts. If I only wrote about the Meta and VUAG buys, I'd be presenting a curated, sanitised version of my investing that doesn't reflect the full picture. That's not honest, and honesty is the whole premise of this site.
So here it is: I bought a tiny position in Amesite. It's speculative, it's risky, and it's a departure from my usual approach. It might work brilliantly, it might do nothing, it might go to zero. I'll report back either way. That's the deal.
As always: this is what I did with my own money. Not a recommendation. All investing carries risk — you can lose money, and past performance doesn't predict future returns. Amesite (AMST) is a micro-cap stock with specific and significant risks including illiquidity, lack of profitability, revenue concentration, competitive pressure, and the possibility of total capital loss. This is a speculative position and not suitable for most investors. US-listed shares carry currency risk for UK investors. Do your own research.