There’s a War for Quant Talent Among AI Firms and Hedge Funds – Is It Just Another Bubble?

Hedge funds are having to battle to keep their top quant talent, who are being wooed by artificial intelligence firms. However, this trend might not have staying power. In an interview with Hedge Fund Alpha, Karysca Gill, senior vice president of global talent partner Selby Jennings, questioned whether it’s just another temporary hiring bubble.

What AI labs are looking for in quant talent

According to Gill, AI labs are looking for Ph.D. graduates who have studied in STEM-related fields and focused a lot on technical courses like computer science, math and physics. They’re also looking for candidates with publications or deep research under their belt following their doctorate.

At the more experienced level, AI firms are seeking candidates with experience in deep statistics, probability stats, linear algebra optimization, and deep programming in languages like C++ and Python. The firm also looks for candidates who have worked on low-latency systems or have used probability theory.

Gill has noticed some big names calling for quants to make the shift from finance to technology.

“There's even a tweet put out from Sam Altman himself, asking for, if you worked on high frequency trading, shaving nanoseconds off latency, we'd be interested in having you at OpenAI,” she said. “So I think there's a very transferable skill set when it comes to quantitative finance and AI or tech in that they have worked on these cutting-edge technologies. They've worked well in high-frequency trading. They work on automated trading. So they are very technically adept when it comes to their programming.”

Who’s poaching quant talent from hedge funds?

Gill also said successful candidates have worked on high-performance computing and with “messy” data sets, which AI firms also work with. She added that these skills are very transferrable from quant finance to AI labs.

Some of the biggest names that are poaching talent from quant trading firms include OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind. However, some quant finance firms are also poaching talent from AI companies as they build out their own AI labs internally.

“So it's like, XTX Markets is building out XTY Labs, which is an AI Lab,” Gill said. “There's Hudson River Trading has HAIL, which is HRT AI labs. There's Balyasny building a centralized AI team, Vatic, Exodus Point, etc. So we're seeing it on both ends.”