Quantitative private funds initiate "class reshaping"

The quantitative private equity industry may be undergoing an unprecedented "reshuffling" moment.

If you haven't tracked this industry for a few months, you'll be surprised to find that the latest AUM table for industry institutions has already undergone disruptive changes.

The “six major kings” that emerged in the past two years are entering a new round of survival battles. Their brands remain strong, but many of them are approaching the “ceiling” of one hundred billion yuan in size, and previously effective strategies are now facing diminishing returns and bottlenecks.

At the same time, ambitious "quasi-first-tier" and "one-and-a-half-tier" quantitative institutions are still expanding their scale, enjoying the "sweet moment" of positive interaction between scale and strategy.

Suddenly, the once worshiped one hundred billion scale in the entire industry quietly squeezed in dozens of players, launching a new round of melee.

Who will “break out” and lead the way?

First Tier: "Slimming Forward"

According to the latest AUM data released by an industry third-party research and investment platform, China’s leading quantitative private equity group has recently undergone significant structural changes.

By the end of Q1 2026, the latest leading group has shrunk to four companies: High-Fund Quantitative, Jiukun Investment, Mingxun Investment, Yanfu Investment.

Their AUMs are all "packed" tightly in the narrow range of 80–90 billion yuan.

Looking back a year, the four institutions managed roughly 60–70 billion yuan each. After a bull market, they collectively achieved an increase of tens of billions in scale.

Another important sign behind this: none of the leading institutions reached or exceeded 100 billion yuan in AUM.

It should be noted that approximately seven years ago, the industry already had quantitative private equity institutions with AUM exceeding 100 billion yuan. But after another stock market cycle, the leading institutions, with bigger teams and more diverse strategies, still could not break through the 100 billion yuan “ceiling”.

Are asset management institutions actively shrinking their scale to safeguard returns, or are the boundaries of their strategies close to the limit?

The answer is intriguing.

Chasers "Keeping Close Pace"

Although the first tier has two fewer institutions than before, the quasi-first-tier group has grown rapidly.

The same source shows that Chengqi Asset and Century Frontier Asset have successfully entered the 60–70 billion yuan range, forming the neck-and-neck group in the quantitative private equity camp.

Moreover, the rankings of these two institutions display highly aggressive “leapfrog” characteristics.

Looking back a year, Chengqi Asset was still in the 30–40 billion yuan group, and Century Frontier Asset was only at the 20–30 billion yuan "mid-tier" level.

In just four quarters, the former nearly doubled its scale, while the latter achieved explosive, multi-level growth.

This expansion not only broke the industry’s original hierarchy, but objectively formed a certain “catch-up” trend toward the first tier.

The positive momentum of these chasing institutions is already putting pressure on the leaders. If they can continue to maintain strategy effectiveness and manage more assets, we may soon witness changes among the top group.

The Rise of the “New Nobility”

Behind the 60 billion yuan tier, Blackwing Asset, Longqi Technology, Mingshi Fund, and Wanyan Asset have all firmly established themselves in the 50–60 billion yuan range.

The collective leap of this group shows the strongest sense of “disruption” in the quantitative industry.

Looking back a year, Blackwing Asset was only in the 20–30 billion yuan range, and the other three—Longqi, Mingshi, and Wanyan—were just hovering at 10–20 billion yuan.

In just one year, these institutions transformed from “mid-tier” to “quasi-leading” quality.

This disruptive explosive power stems from their differentiated “multi-strategy” gene. Unlike the homogeneous competition of pure stock strategies, take Blackwing Asset for example; its core lies in the “stock + CTA” product line, working closely with large brokers such as Guotai Haitong, absorbing substantial client funds. These institutions are still able to capture returns through cross-asset strategies when the stock market fluctuates.

The rise of this “new quantitative nobility” has become a wild and fresh growth force; their situation may better represent the industry’s "new powers":

Their actions proclaim the breaking of industry competition boundaries.

The “Potential” Group’s Diverse Identities

If we regard 50 billion yuan as a boundary between the first and second tiers, then behind the “new nobility” of the 50 billion-yuan group, three institutions are now in the 40–50 billion yuan range of the “second tier+”.

These three institutions are: Lingjun Investment, Tianyan Capital, and Maoyuan Quantitative.

This group is also currently the most diverse.

It includes former industry leaders who “fell” for various reasons, potential institutions taking steady steps forward, and established players keeping pace in alternative ways.

Looking back a year, the 40–50 billion yuan range used to be the “runner-up area” in the industry, second only to High-Fund, Jiukun, and other “Big Four”, a high ground that many institutions aspired to—but now it's merely the “potential group”.

Of course, we can't ignore that many former “king” and “quasi-king” institutions have already fallen out of channels and public view and are not included in this concentrated review.

The decline of these institutions is another shocking story. It not only signals their demise in the new market environment, but also suggests their investors may be facing unexpected performance.

The “Data Foundation” of the Quantitative Industry

While the leading tier is undergoing intense differentiation, the “one hundred billion club” and “fifty billion club” of quantitative private equity are expanding rapidly.

Statistics from the same source show that currently three institutions are in the 30–40 billion yuan range, ten private equity funds are in the 20–30 billion yuan range, and as many as 27 institutions are concentrated in the 10–20 billion yuan range. More institutions are crowded between 5–10 billion yuan.

In summary, there are already 53 quantitative private equity institutions at the one-hundred-billion scale—this is only those who have actively reported their figures.

It's possible that some institutions hide their true strength or delays in reporting have caused their actual scale not to be reflected in these statistics.

Trading Share and the Transaction Ceiling

Even using the somewhat “conservative” estimation method above—that is, calculated by each segment’s minimum threshold—the combined minimum AUM of these 53 institutions has already reached 1.43 trillion yuan.

According to the usual turnover rate, the active quantitative institutions managing 1.4–2 trillion yuan could directly produce trading volumes of tens of trillions, accounting for about one quarter of last year's total A-share market turnover (about 42 trillion yuan).

This may explain from another angle why the leading quantitative institutions are stuck under the one hundred billion yuan ceiling.

When similar strategies' trading share reaches a certain ratio, the strategy implementers or their key products face diminishing returns among each other. Yield dilution becomes easier.

Since the beginning of this year, more leading institutions have experienced sharp drops in yields or enlarged drawdowns, which is further proof of this situation.

Perhaps, the industry now needs—just as five years ago—to upgrade its strategies again. Those institutions that upgrade their strategies first can expect to enjoy the real “dinner”.

The data in this article comes from: "Quantitative Investment and Machine Learning"

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