Hudson River Trading hired an ex-Goldman Sachs MD for its growing venture capital arm
Want to work as a venture capitalist but not at a venture capital firm? In the past your best bet might have been to work in Goldman Sachs' elite 'principal strategic investments (PSI) group' which, as of 2019, had invested $1.5bn in 76 companies. Today VC is a space that electronic trading firms are breaking into, and one of the biggest has hired an alum of that elite team in London to help it grow.
💥Follow us on WhatsApp for news alerts.💥
Matt O'Neill has joined Hudson River Trading in London as an investor with HRT Ventures. HRT's website says that it invests in "early-stage ventures seeking to influence capital markets, trading, and the broader financial landscape." The firm has been making venture investments since at least 2021 when it invested in investment platform Republic. Other investments include AI infrastructure firm Eridu and sports trading platform Sporttrade.
O'Neill was most recently at another trading firm, Flow Traders, where he was global head of business development. He spent three years there, working on relationship management with banks alongside the firm's VC initiatives. Before that, he spent 14 years at Goldman Sachs across two separate stints, where he was an MD and helped set up the PSI group's Hong Kong business. He also spent five years at Morgan Stanley's equities clearing business.
Jane Street has been getting involved in private markets too, most notably by acquiring a stake in Anthropic from FTX following its bankruptcy. The firm has used these investments as an opportunity to "expand [into] businesses that are more public facing" according to Jane Street trader John Case in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in June.
The prevalence of trading firms in the VC space may also be influenced by the various trading firm alums who have built successful startups. HRT's first intern class famously included several major players in the AI space today including Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, Cognition CEO Scott Wu and Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan.
O'Neill did not respond to a request for comment.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: WhatsApp: http://wa.me/442079977910 (+44 20 7997 7910), Telegram: @AlexMcMurray, Signal: @AlexMcMurrayEFC.88 Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: comments are moderated intermittently by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You must take sole responsibility for comments you post on this site. We will take reasonable steps to weed out anything that we consider to be offensive or inappropriate.
