Ken Griffin says Citadel AI agents finish PhD tasks in days
Ken Griffin, founder of Citadel, described feeling depressed after watching the hedge fund's AI agents complete complex market analysis and deal structuring. Tasks that once required teams of PhDs working for months now finish in days through agentic AI systems already deployed at the firm. Griffin made the remarks in a Stanford Leadership Institute stage interview while discussing the shift to autonomous agents handling high-skilled finance roles.
#76Elon Musk@ELONMUSKWhere will AI be in 1, 2 or 3 years?
#270Garry Tan@GARRYTANKen Griffin doesn’t understand the ceiling just got raised. Some 20-something maybe reading this will build the cracked AI-human-computer-symbiosis team that will supersede his whole operation because he is too distracted about lowering cost
Boil the ocean don’t cut your costs
TFTC@TFTC21Ken Griffin went home on a Friday "fairly depressed" after watching AI agents at Citadel do work that used to take teams of PhDs in finance months to complete. Done in days. His words: "These are not mid-tier white collar jobs. These are extraordinarily high skilled jobs being automated by agentic AI." This is the head of one of the most successful hedge funds in history saying the people he pays seven figures to analyze markets and structure deals are being replaced by software that works in hours instead of months. Not theoretically. In his own office. Right now. The Coatue deck we covered earlier this week called agents "the biggest unlock" in AI. Griffin just confirmed it from the buy side. The shift from copilots to agents is not a future event. It is already happening at the highest levels of finance.
#1359Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀@PETERWILDEFORDKEN GRIFFIN (CITADEL): "Work that we would usually do with people with masters and PhDs in finance over the course of weeks or months being done by AI agents over the course of hours or days. These are not these are not mid-tier white collar jobs."
Brett Caughran@FundamentEdgeA big pivot from Ken Griffin on AI: “Number one is, in the last few months, there has been a step change in the productivity of the AI toolkit. It is profoundly more powerful than it was just nine months ago. And for us at Citadel, that has allowed us to unleash a much broader array of use cases for AI. And it has been really interesting to watch, to be blunt, work that we would usually do with people with masters and PhDs in finance over the course of weeks or months being done by AI agents over the course of hours or days. These are not these are not mid-tier white collar jobs. These are like extraordinarily high skilled jobs being, I'm going to pick a word, automated by agentic AI. And I gotta tell you, I went home one Friday actually fairly depressed by this because you could just see how this was going to have such a dramatic impact on society. When you witness it in your own four walls, when you see work that used to be man years of work being done in days or weeks, it's like, wow, like that's the first time I've seen real impact in our four walls.” This echoes my own experience with agents and the conversations I am having with students, friends & clients. The toolkit has dramatically transformed and it feels like in finance, for the first time, AI is real.
