Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management is seeking to raise about $1 billion for a new stock-picking hedge fund focused on artificial intelligence, according to people familiar with the matter.
The fund will bet on and against AI hardware and semiconductor companies globally and will be the firm’s first new hedge fund in decades, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Point72 currently has a main hedge fund along with some venture capital vehicles.
Cohen has said he expects the impact of AI to be “transformational” and that it has the power to change how companies work and save them millions of dollars.
“There’s going to be big winners and big losers,” he said in an April CNBC interview, adding that while it may take years to play out, “when you have technological change like this, it sort of reminds me of the ’90s where the best new companies came out of that period.”
A representative for Point72, which managed $33.9 billion as of April, declined to comment.
The fund, which will be run by portfolio manager Eric Sanchez, is expected to launch late this year or in early 2025, the people said. It will receive cash from external investors, Point72 employees and Cohen himself, who will also help oversee it.
While Point72’s main fund is strictly market-neutral, the new vehicle will have a more flexible mandate, meaning it may hold some longer-biased positions not typically held in the main fund.
In 2021, Point72 launched Hyperscale, its first private equity fund that uses AI to modernize and improve efficiency at companies it acquires. The firm also has Point72 Ventures, which was founded in 2016 and invests only Cohen’s cash in early-stage tech startups.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.