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.

The move, reported by Business Insider, 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.

The analysts are organised 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.

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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.

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 without putting every analyst on its own payroll. Some reports put the number of such teams at 44.

The bet is not risk-free. Human pods are expensive, they compete fiercely for the same star analysts, and they can drag on performance if their calls sour.

Multi-manager rivals such as Millennium and Citadel have long shown how costly, and how cut-throat, the talent race can become, and Qube is now paying to play in the same market as firms like Jane Street.

For now, Qube has said little publicly. The firm is famously secretive and did not comment in the reports, so much of what is known comes from anonymous sources and from a steady trail of senior hires disclosed by recruiters and rival desks.

What comes next is a test of whether a house built on machines can manage people just as well. If Irvine’s analysts deliver, expect Qube to widen the programme; if they stumble, the algorithms will keep running regardless. London remains the natural venue for the experiment, home to Europe’s deepest pool of quant and fundamental talent alike.