Years ago, search engine optimization was the name of the game. Writers churned out loads of copy using specific keywords designed to attract traffic from human searchers. However, one AI expert sees a much different internet in the years to come.
In an interview with Hedge Fund Alpha, Daniele Grassi of Axyon AI shared his journey from programming at age eight to running a global AI company based in Italy that serves hedge funds. He also emphasized the importance that we continue to think despite how much thinking AI can do for us.
Programming from age eight
Grassi started programming when he was eight years old, building a stock market simulation already at that young age. Grassi said one fun fact about that simulation was that he got something right.
“In a stock market simulation I worked back in the day, I included three simulated financial newspapers,” Grassi said. “Each of them published sentiment indicators, and the idea was that you had to figure out which one was the most reliable and weigh that one more heavily than the others. That was essentially the core of the game. But in reality, the interesting part was that the newspaper ended up influencing the market, rather than the market influencing the newspaper.”
His father actually gave him a Commodore 64, on which he did his first programming. Grassi said the computer came with a programming manual rather than a user manual. When you ran a game on the Commodore 64, it took minutes for the game to load. Grassi said he simply took out the manual and started reading, and that’s what triggered his interest in programming.
“That’s when I realized the computer could actually do things I wanted it to do, and that’s really how I got started,” he said. “From that point on, it became something I always enjoyed. One of the first programs I built was a stock market simulation. My father used to buy a weekly magazine about the markets, and I remember being fascinated by all the numbers. They seemed incredibly complex, and that complexity really attracted me. That’s what got me started.”
Starting his first company
Grassi quickly figured out that programming was what he wanted to do. He wanted to study software engineering, even though psychology also interested him.
“Both came in handy, I think, in the long term,” he added. “When I was in university, I started my first company with a friend. We built software which was a sort of ERP for us here. A specific niche, and we sold it across Italy. The project had some success, which led us to start a company around it,” he said. “After university, the idea was to grow the business and generate the cash flow needed to fund the research and development we wanted to pursue at the intersection of artificial intelligence and finance. Those are two complex fields, but they fit together remarkably well.”
Luckily, they were able to spin off Axyon AI from the previous company in 2016 after a couple of years of R&D. They kept a majority position in the original company, leaving it in the hands of a couple of young employees. Last year, a U.S. fund bought that company, which was another very good outcome after so many years. Since 2016, Grassi has been entirely focused on Axyon AI.
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