(Bloomberg) — The investment firm for one of the world’s biggest computerized trading fortunes is expanding its holdings in machine learning.
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Euclidean Capital — Jim Simons’s family office — has invested in at least six companies since the start of 2020 that focus on artificial intelligence, spanning health care, customer services and aviation, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The firm took part in fundraising rounds announced last month for data-privacy firm Duality Technologies and aerial imaging startup DroneBase, which applies AI to its analytics. It also raised its bets this year in ASAPP, a provider of AI for call centers, and deep-learning platform Peltarion.
Simons, 83, the founder of quantitative hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, has a net worth of $25.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Euclidean is investing in the area that helped make Simons one of the world’s most successful investors. The former military codebreaker was an early adopter on Wall Street in using AI for trading decisions at Renaissance, which had about $60 billion of assets at the start of 2021. A former chairman of the math department at Stony Brook University, he’s also published academic papers on mathematical patterns and supported initiatives on machine learning through his family’s charitable foundation.
A representative for New York-based Euclidean didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Euclidean was set up in 2009, about three decades after Simons left academia to manage money, and doesn’t disclose the amount of funds at its disposal. The family office is led by Ashvin Chhabra, former chief investment officer at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, and has more than a dozen staff based in the U.S., including recent hires from Cambridge Associates and GoldenTree Asset Management.
Monique Miller, a former managing director at Wilshire, joined Euclidean as its head of investment strategy in 2018.
Since last year, the family office has also invested in machine-learning diagnostics firm Dascena and biotech startup Codagenix, which is developing a vaccine to fight Covid-19. As of Sept. 30, it owned stakes worth about $170 million in more than a dozen publicly traded companies, including health-care firms PMV Pharmaceuticals Inc., Alector Inc. and RAPT Therapeutics Inc.
(Adds additional hire in eighth paragraph.)
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