Wall Street veteran sets up AI hedge fund, with investment decisions primarily handled by artificial intelligence.

Wall Street veterans Alex Popa and Charles Elkan are raising capital for a new stock hedge fund operated primarily by artificial intelligence (AI) agents and models. According to a Tuesday statement, their investment firm Poesis’s first strategy, AI Clarity, will open to external clients early next year. Popa and Elkan have been managing their own capital in the strategy since August. The 46-year-old Popa spent more than 15 years at Capital Group, where he previously served as portfolio manager for its American Growth Fund. The 63-year-old Elkan led machine learning efforts at Goldman Sachs Group. Sources familiar with the matter said the pair plan to add additional strategies, with the long-term goal of building a multi-strategy fund for institutional investors. Popa and his team could manage billions of dollars with fewer than 100 employees, resulting in lower operating costs than large multi-strategy funds such as Citadel and Millennium Management. AI Clarity invests in 80 to 100 large-cap US-listed stocks, with a target holding period of three years. The AI agents use quantitative models to research and select stocks, and determine entry and exit points for trades. When the agents detect potential market downturns, they hedge risk by shorting stock indices. Popa and his team set risk limits and other parameters, and review and approve all trades.