Quant fund Qube is hiring human stock pickers to sit beside its algorithms
Qube Research & Technologies, one of London’s largest quantitative hedge funds, is doing something that would once have looked heretical for a firm built on code: it is hiring humans to pick stocks.
(Reported by Business Insider)
The move places the fund alongside a small group of systematic managers that have begun to blend algorithms with old-fashioned conviction. Qube has spent much of the past year assembling an in-house team of fundamental analysts, according to Business Insider and Hedgeweek. The group is led by Stephen Irvine, a former head of Balyasny’s London office who later founded, and then wound down, his own firm, Lijaro Asset Management.
How Qube’s New Team Works
The analysts are organized by sector, covering consumer, financials, chemicals, technology, pharmaceuticals, transportation, and industrials. Each runs a dedicated “sleeve” of capital worth between $200m and $500m, depending on experience, under Irvine’s oversight.
Qube has recruited at least seven sector specialists for the effort, drawing talent from Millennium, Rokos, BNP Paribas, and Barclays, the reports said. Business Insider, which put the firm’s assets at about $34bn when it detailed the plan, described the first internal team as going live within days of its report.
Breaking from Tradition
That recruitment drive marks a clear break from the firm’s origins as a pure signals-and-backtesting shop. Qube was carved out of Credit Suisse’s quantitative and systematic asset management unit in 2016 and became independent after a management buyout, building its name on algorithmic trading where researchers encode statistical signals into automated systems rather than betting on individual companies.
That machinery has paid off. Qube’s main fund returned about 30% in 2025, and according to industry reports, the business had swelled to roughly $38bn in assets by early 2026, up from around $23bn a year earlier, with smaller vehicles also in the black.
The Rationale for Blending Approaches
So why add people? The logic, echoed across the industry, is that discretionary managers can spot opportunities models miss, particularly around messy, one-off events such as mergers, restructurings, and regulatory shocks.
Blending the two approaches, the theory goes, widens the range of returns a firm can chase and smooths the moments when a purely systematic book struggles. It also gives a firm a second engine of growth at a time when investors are pouring money into both quant and fundamental strategies, and when top analysts can command large guarantees to move.
Qube is not alone in the crossover. DE Shaw and Engineers Gate, both known for systematic strategies, have expanded into fundamental investing in recent years, and several hedge funds better known for machines have quietly built discretionary pods. The firm has also backed human stock pickers from the outside. It has seeded or allocated to dozens of external fundamental teams through separately managed accounts, giving it exposure to discretionary strategies.