Quantitative giants are heavily investing in the academic world.
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In the global investment industry, there is only one sector that tightly binds its returns with papers and academic research ability—that is the quantitative investment industry.
In financial circles, large quant firms have long been known as the “salary ceiling,” lavishly rewarding strategies and their inventors capable of generating huge returns, and spending heavily to attract smart people from outside.
More importantly, their “salary ceiling” is not only open to top minds within the company, but also to elite brains in academia. Since a few years ago, their generous sponsorship of academic summer camps, opening training and internship opportunities to outstanding students, and offering very high internship stipends, all illustrate the quant firms' support for academia.
This batch of firms has made big moves again recently. According to information from Zishitang, several top domestic quant institutions have recently made synchronized appearances at overseas top academic conferences.
What are they doing there?
What are they hoping to gain?
Quant giants show up at “top academic conferences”
According to industry sources, leading domestic quant firms such as Minghui and Jiukun are strengthening exchanges and communication with academic talent in the industry in new ways.
On April 30, 2026, quant hedge fund Minghui Investment quietly launched a notice titled “Minghui Top Conference Support Program” on its recruiting channel.
The notice stated: As one of the earliest domestic hedge funds to successfully apply artificial intelligence technology in financial markets, Minghui Investment has always dedicated itself to building top talent teams and advancing AI infrastructure.
Minghui firmly believes that “lifelong learning” is the foundation for weathering cycles, deeply participates in global academic conferences and college research collaborations, and continues to lead the industry in frontier exploration.
“We deeply understand that academic conferences are the golden stage for talent growth, so we officially launch the ‘Minghui Top Conference Support Program.’”
Providing “ten thousand yuan-level conference funding support”
At the same time, Minghui also announced the first event target: the ICML conference to be held in Seoul, South Korea, in July 2026.
Reportedly, ICML Korea is the International Conference on Machine Learning, founded in 1980, the most established global conference in machine learning and AI, and known as one of the world’s top three AI conferences.
According to the plan, Minghui Investment will provide “ten thousand yuan-level conference funding support” to selected participants, and invite them to join company banquets and recruitment activities held during ICML2026.
Targeting STEM students
Additionally, Minghui Investment strictly limits its support to undergraduates, master’s, and doctoral students in STEM fields like computer science, mathematics, and physics, who must meet the hard requirement of “having a paper accepted by ICML 2026 and planning to attend in person.”
The mathematical statistics and computing abilities covered in STEM disciplines are the core tools for quant strategy development, and institutions need these talents to turn complex mathematical models into real trading profits.
The condition of submitting a paper and attending in person again focuses the target on those with relevant research achievements, evidently reflecting the institutions' talent focus and interests.
Jiukun Investment follows: 20,000 yuan top support
Just half a month later—on May 14—another top quant giant, Jiukun Investment, officially followed suit, launching the “ICML International Conference Scholarship Support Program.”
Similar to Minghui Investment, Jiukun also targets the academic machine learning conference ICML, but its support magnitude and selection criteria appear even more specific and strict.
Jiukun’s “generous support” is “up to 20,000 RMB per person,” doubling the funding compared to Minghui, and this special fund is clearly specified for reimbursing hotels, travel, and registration costs during the conference.
Compared to Minghui’s vague “ten thousand yuan-level” phrasing, Jiukun directly shows the top budget, demonstrating stronger “financial sincerity.”
Stricter talent standards
In talent selection, Jiukun draws a clearer “elite red line”: applicants must be the first author (including co-first) of the paper.
In academia, being the first author means being the core contributor and main executor of the research, the “chief hero” of intellectual achievement.
Jiukun particularly emphasizes this identity to further focus on key talent, reject “nominal” researchers, and precisely support those with true independent research abilities—top brains capable of leading algorithm innovation.
In addition, Jiukun requires more regarding graduation time, demanding that applicants graduate after January 2027, meaning they are targeting “soon-to-graduate” candidates entering the job market in the next 1–2 years.
Kuande Investment’s “booth diplomacy”
Upon sorting, we also discovered it’s not just the aforementioned two top quant funds. On April 23, another leading quant firm, Kuande Investment, announced it would appear at the ICLR 2026 conference (another global premier machine learning conference) as a sponsor.
Unlike the first two firms, which directly provide “funding support” to student attendees, Kuande chose a more “lightweight” but equally precise approach:
Setting up a booth and hosting coffee meetups during conference breaks.
Although the announcement did not mention any cash subsidies or scholarship plans, Kuande explicitly extended an invitation to join “in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil” with paper authors. Given the distant journey and expensive travel costs, such an invitation, if only verbal, seems somewhat inconsiderate.
In any case, Kuande Investment will clearly appear at this top conference, and what role its “booth diplomacy” will play in academic exchanges and whether it can maintain frequent contact with top AI talent remains to be seen.
Why do quant giants “compete” at top conferences?
The signs above show that China’s quant giants are increasingly extending their reach to overseas top conferences. Clearly, their purpose is not simply “sponsorship”—behind it lies a keen interest in frontier technology and an intense desire for top talent.
Take the aforementioned ICML conference, for example. It, together with NeurIPS and ICLR, forms the three major machine learning conferences. If a paper is accepted by ICML, it has undergone rigorous academic review in the field of machine learning.
Using top conferences as a mechanism to obtain a more focused list of candidate talent is, one must admit, both professional and effective thinking by quant firms.
The arrangement of meetings and booths during conference intervals, and their enthusiastic “support,” will leave participants with strong positive impressions that other firms cannot give, undoubtedly achieving a “precision focus” in recruiting industry elites.
On this basis, if they can get deeper opportunities to communicate with talent and gain stronger goodwill, then “ten thousand yuan-level funding” becomes highly cost-effective.
In fact, some firms like Jiukun Investment go further by holding “quant night” and “frontier AI night” at banquets, where tech guests and candidates engage in deep discussions on quant research and AI large models, and even advance recruitment through “HR face-to-face” sessions.
This “in-depth exchanges during conference breaks” is essentially a new expansion in quant talent recruitment.
Why do they need top geniuses?
The above strategies by quant firms reveal the intense competition for top talent in this sector. The background is that, as the scale of firms and trading volumes grow, nearly every firm faces the dilution and thinning out of excess returns (alpha).
Quant investment by its very nature means that they cannot simply stack up talent or diversify portfolios like active investors to improve performance.
Only by continuously gathering “top geniuses” to explore effective new strategies among massive data and metrics can they upgrade their investment and expand their capacity.
From this perspective, it’s actually quant firms that need the help of top geniuses, rather than the other way around. The proactive entry of these firms into the (academic) circle may be an inevitable choice for these investment teams.
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