The DeepMind trio who built a poker AI are now making money for quant hedge funds
The DeepMind trio who built a poker AI are now making money for quant hedge funds
曾打造扑克 AI 的 DeepMind 三人组，如今正在为量化对冲基金赚取利润
Three former DeepMind researchers who created an AI that beat humans at poker have now applied the same technology to trading stocks — and the bet appears to be paying off. Their Prague-based AI lab, EquiLibre Technologies, is now valued at $500 million after raising an undisclosed-sum Series A, TechCrunch learned. The round was led by Creandum, and, although the VC also declined to disclose the size of the round, vice president Cameron Sellers confirmed that it was the largest single investment the firm “has ever made in one go into a company,” he told TechCrunch.
三位曾开发出击败人类扑克选手的 AI 的前 DeepMind 研究员，如今将同样的技术应用于股票交易，且这一押注似乎正在获得回报。据 TechCrunch 获悉，他们位于布拉格的 AI 实验室 EquiLibre Technologies 在完成一轮未披露金额的 A 轮融资后，估值已达到 5 亿美元。本轮融资由 Creandum 领投，尽管该风投机构拒绝透露具体融资金额，但其副总裁 Cameron Sellers 向 TechCrunch 证实，这是该机构“有史以来单次对一家公司进行的最大规模投资”。
The common denominator between poker and Wall Street is that they are well suited for reinforcement learning, an AI training technique where self-learning models are incentivized by rewards. According to Martin Schmid, EquiLibre CEO, “The nice thing about trading and markets is that the scoring is super simple: how much money did the agent make?” This isn’t just game money. In partnership with quant firm Tower Research Capital, EquiLibre’s algorithms have been trading billions in daily volume across the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.
扑克与华尔街的共同点在于，它们都非常适合强化学习（一种通过奖励机制激励自学习模型的 AI 训练技术）。EquiLibre 首席执行官 Martin Schmid 表示：“交易和市场的妙处在于评分非常简单：智能体赚了多少钱？”这可不仅仅是游戏币。通过与量化公司 Tower Research Capital 合作，EquiLibre 的算法已经在标普 500 指数和纳斯达克市场进行了每日数十亿美元的交易。
The startup claims its agents have been doing well since their rollout on crypto markets in 2025, and now on stock exchanges, with “a perfect record of zero negative months since inception,” meaning they have finished each month with their investments up overall. By applying its AI to quant hedge funds, the startup is in a field where automation is commonplace and, if successful, improvements can quickly turn into cash. That made the startup appealing to Creandum, Sellers said.
该初创公司声称，自 2025 年在加密货币市场推出以来，其智能体表现一直良好，目前在证券交易所的表现同样出色，并保持着“自成立以来零亏损月份的完美记录”，这意味着他们每个月的投资总额均实现盈利。通过将 AI 应用于量化对冲基金，该公司进入了一个自动化已成常态的领域，一旦成功，技术改进可以迅速转化为现金。Sellers 表示，这正是该初创公司吸引 Creandum 的原因。
“The potential total addressable market of trading in the financial markets is one of the biggest on earth, and there are countless funds over the years that have generated quantums of profit that make most venture-backed successes look small,” Sellers said. But he noted that EquiLibre explicitly defines itself as “a lab first, not a finance firm.”
“金融市场交易的潜在总目标市场是全球最大的市场之一，多年来有无数基金创造了巨额利润，使得大多数获得风投支持的成功案例相形见绌，”Sellers 说道。但他指出，EquiLibre 明确将自己定义为“首先是一个实验室，而不是一家金融公司”。
Schmid and his two founders — CTO Rudolf Kadlec and CSO Matej Moravcik — don’t have a background in finance, and it is not what drives them, he told TechCrunch. “I’m not doing this because I’m excited about making markets efficient. I’m doing this because we are all excited about building new things that have never been built before, and this is a lot of fun to build,” Schmid said.
Schmid 和他的两位联合创始人——首席技术官 Rudolf Kadlec 和首席科学官 Matej Moravcik——都没有金融背景，这也不是他们的驱动力，他告诉 TechCrunch。“我做这件事不是因为我对提高市场效率感到兴奋。我做这件事是因为我们都热衷于构建前所未有的新事物，而且构建这些东西非常有趣，”Schmid 说。
The prospect of frontier AI by DeepMind alumni is an area of hot pursuit by VCs as well. Another recent such example is Ineffable Intelligence, which recently raised 1.1 billion. Most of these are based in the U.K., but there are notable exceptions, including EquiLibre. In the case of EquiLibre’s founding trio, they were visiting PhD students at the Google-owned company’s first international AI research office in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (which Alphabet shut down in 2023.) While there, they built DeepStack, the first AI program to defeat pro players at no-limit poker, also known as Texas hold ’em. They also worked with professors who are now part of the startup’s high-profile advisory board — including Rich Sutton, who went on to receive the Turing award in 2024 for his work on reinforcement learning.
DeepMind 校友带来的前沿 AI 前景也是风投机构竞相追逐的领域。最近的另一个例子是 Ineffable Intelligence，该公司最近筹集了 11 亿美元。这些公司大多位于英国，但也有一些显著的例外，包括 EquiLibre。就 EquiLibre 的创始三人组而言，他们曾是谷歌旗下公司在加拿大阿尔伯塔省埃德蒙顿设立的首个国际 AI 研究办公室（Alphabet 已于 2023 年关闭该办公室）的访问博士生。在那里，他们开发了 DeepStack，这是第一个在无限注扑克（即德州扑克）中击败职业选手的 AI 程序。他们还与多位教授合作，这些教授现在也是该初创公司高规格顾问委员会的成员，其中包括在 2024 年因强化学习研究而获得图灵奖的 Rich Sutton。
To build their startup, EquiLibre’s founders decided to move back to their home country, Czechia. “This is where we had a lot of people we had worked with, and there was a large Czech diaspora at Google and other places,” Schmid said. “These were our friends, so we told them, ‘Hey, guys, we are moving back to Prague, do you want to join us?’”
为了创办公司，EquiLibre 的创始人决定回到他们的祖国捷克。“这里有很多我们曾经共事过的人，而且在谷歌和其他地方有大量的捷克侨民，”Schmid 说。“他们是我们的朋友，所以我们告诉他们：‘嘿，伙计们，我们要搬回布拉格了，你们想加入我们吗？’”
That helped EquiLibre build its initial team back in 2022 and reach its current headcount of 25 people; but according to Schmid, that choice of location keeps paying dividends. Compared to San Francisco, “It’s much easier to keep the good people here, because there’s not a new sexy AI thing happening every two months.” Not that EquiLibre is the only hot AI startup in town. BottleCap AI is based in the same building. Still, this is one of the more notable AI companies in the region for talent.
这帮助 EquiLibre 在 2022 年组建了初始团队，并达到了目前 25 人的规模；但据 Schmid 称，这一选址选择持续带来红利。与旧金山相比，“在这里留住优秀人才要容易得多，因为这里不会每两个月就冒出一个新的热门 AI 项目。”当然，EquiLibre 并不是当地唯一的 AI 热点初创公司，BottleCap AI 就位于同一栋大楼内。尽管如此，它仍是该地区人才吸引力最显著的 AI 公司之一。
It next plans to scale its compute infrastructure, bringing online what it expects will be one of the largest compute clusters in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). While the startup also declined to disclose its total funding to date, Schmid said it previously raised two other funding rounds, with pre-seed backers including CEE-focused VC firm Credo, which also backed ElevenLabs and UiPath. According to Dealroom data, EquiLibre’s $10 million seed round was led by Blossom Capital at a $140 million valuation.
该公司接下来的计划是扩展其计算基础设施，上线其预期的中东欧（CEE）地区最大的计算集群之一。虽然该公司拒绝透露迄今为止的总融资额，但 Schmid 表示，此前已完成了另外两轮融资，种子轮前的支持者包括专注于中东欧的风投机构 Credo，该机构也曾投资过 ElevenLabs 和 UiPath。根据 Dealroom 的数据，EquiLibre 的 1000 万美元种子轮融资由 Blossom Capital 领投，估值为 1.4 亿美元。
Sellers confirmed that the Series A $500 million valuation was a big jump. But it also comes after the winds have changed favorably for reinforcement learning (RL), including in trading. “When we started, people were skeptical,” said Schmid. But now RL is the standard. “Because we started four years back, we believe we are ahead.”
Sellers 证实，A 轮 5 亿美元的估值是一个巨大的飞跃。但这也发生在强化学习（RL）风向变得有利之后，包括在交易领域。“当我们刚开始时，人们持怀疑态度，”Schmid 说。但现在 RL 已成为标准。“因为我们四年前就开始了，我们相信我们处于领先地位。”
Still, there is a risk that the startup will get leapfrogged by competitors. Trading giant Jane Street, for instance, states it already uses RL with LLMs, “or whatever else we need to train good models.” It also claims it has “tens of thousands of high-end GPUs,” while EquiLibre is seeking to squeeze more compute out of way fewer chips and “get more from less,” Schmid said. Considering how profitable Jane Street is, EquiLibre will have to play its cards well in order to reach its goal to be known as “the AI lab in trading.” But this isn’t poker, and there might be no losers. Says Schmid: “This is not a winner-takes-all market.”
尽管如此，该初创公司仍面临被竞争对手超越的风险。例如，交易巨头 Jane Street 表示，它已经在使用 RL 结合大语言模型，“或者任何我们需要用来训练优秀模型的工具”。它还声称拥有“数万个高端 GPU”，而 EquiLibre 则试图从更少的芯片中榨取更多的算力，实现“以少胜多”，Schmid 说。考虑到 Jane Street 的盈利能力，EquiLibre 必须打好手中的牌，才能实现其成为“交易领域 AI 实验室”的目标。但这毕竟不是扑克，可能并没有输家。Schmid 说：“这不是一个赢家通吃的市场。”