Data Liquidity and the Agentic Marketplace: Moving Beyond Bulk SaaS Contracts The traditional model of purchasing financial data is structurally misaligned with the requirements of modern AI development. While hedge funds have historically navigated opaque pricing and rigid, six-figure bulk contracts, the rise of Frontier Labs and agentic workflows demands a shift toward data liquidity and consumption-based procurement. In this episode, Michael Watson is joined by Dan Entrup (Founder of Agnowled...
Mar 17, 2026•1 hr 7 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Welcome back to The Hedgineer Podcast, where host Michael Watson dives into the world of AI, data, and technology within asset management, hedge funds, and financial services. In this episode, Michael sits down with Jonathan Regenstein, who leads AI within Financial Services at Snowflake . This conversation explores the critical role of data and platform strategy in the successful enterprise deployment of AI, moving beyond purely technical wins to focus on commercial outcomes. Jonathan and Micha...
Dec 16, 2025•52 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Welcome back to The Hedgineer Podcast. In this episode, host Michael Watson sits down with crowd-favorite returning guest, Lucas Rooney. Lucas pulls back the curtain on the "0 to 1" journey of building a new fund, from diligencing the initial idea and recruiting top-tier talent to making the critical "build vs. buy" decisions for a foundational technology stack. But how does launching a fund today differ from just a few years ago? One answer is AI. Michael and Lucas dive deep into how the prolif...
Nov 11, 2025•53 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Beyond the AI Hype with Jason Strimpel In this episode of The Hedgineer Podcast, host Michael Watson sits down with Jason Strimpel, founder of PyQuant News, long-time Pythonista, and AI enthusiast. They dive deep into the practical and philosophical implications of artificial intelligence in both asset management and daily life. They break down how the agentic loop works with the Anthropic Agent SDK , the components of good evaluation frameworks, and even how to talk to your kids about AI Key to...
Oct 21, 2025•1 hr 16 min•Season 2Ep. 15
Kuzu, Knowledge Graphs, and the AI Revolution with Prashanth Rao In this episode of the Hedgineer Podcast, host Michael Watson is joined by Prashanth Rao, AI Engineer at Kuzu, for a deep dive into the world of embedded graph databases and their pivotal role in the age of AI. Building on the previous week's discussion of the columnar database DuckDB, this conversation explores Kuzu, a parallel concept focused on creating high-performance, embedded graph databases. Michael and Prashanth explore wh...
Sep 24, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Season 2Ep. 4
In this episode of The Hedgineer Podcast, host Michael Watson is joined by special guest Rusty Conover, the world's most prolific DuckDB extension builder, for a masterclass on building the next generation of real-time, large-scale data systems. Rusty, who has an extensive career in data engineering, including at multi-manager hedge funds, pulls back the curtain on what makes DuckDB so revolutionary for developers and data engineers. They explore how its blazingly fast, in-process, C++-based arc...
Sep 09, 2025•59 min•Season 2Ep. 3
From Viral Reddit Tool to Enterprise AI: The OpenBB Story | S2E2 Welcome back to Season 2 of The Hedgineer Podcast, where host Michael Watson talks data, AI, and technology in the hedge fund and asset management space. In this episode, Michael sits down with Didier Lopes, the founder of OpenBB, for a conversation that started five years ago during the meme stock boom. Michael reached out to Didier in 2021 after he shared his "Gamestonk Terminal" on r/wallstreetbets. Michael reached out to Didier...
Aug 26, 2025•1 hr 32 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Welcome back to the Hedgineer Podcast! We're kicking off Season 2 with one of our favorite guests, Thomas Li, Co-founder and CEO of Daloopa (https://hubs.ly/Q03C7TSR0). In this episode, we delve into the significant advancements Daloopa has made, including its groundbreaking announcement with Anthropic FIS and its integration into OpenAI. Thomas shares how Daloopa's high-quality, error-free financial data is the key to unlocking the true power of AI for financial analysts. By plugging its verifi...
Aug 12, 2025•1 hr 31 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Special Announcement: Kicking Off Season 2! In this season 2 kickoff episode, host Michael Watson welcomes listeners back for the second season of The Hedgineer Podcast, the go-to source for discussions on AI, data, and technology within asset management, hedge fund, and prop trading space. Get ready for an exciting new season featuring a lineup of entrepreneurs and thought leaders. The season kicks off with a return guest, Thomas Li, the CEO of Daloopa, to discuss the significant changes in the...
Aug 04, 2025•25 min
Welcome to Episode 16 of The Hedgineer Podcast! In this episode, host Michael Watson dives deep into the world of technology, data, and AI in the asset management, hedge fund, and proprietary trading space. Joining Michael is Christina Qi, the founder of Databento. Michael kicks off the episode by introducing Christina and discussing the disruptive impact of Databento on the real-time market data experience within the asset management hedge fund space. Christina shares her extensive background, ...
Dec 19, 2024•29 min•Ep. 16
Data is maturing at an incredible rate. In turn, the value of data is increasing as new strategies and productization continues to evolve. In episode 15, Eagle Alpha CEO Niall Hurley, discusses the changes and developments in the alternative data space. Niall highlights emergence of corporates, often times b2b SASS companies, realizing new high margin revenue opportunities by monetizing their data by working with companies like Eagle Alpha to deliver unique insights to their clients. By allowing...
Sep 02, 2024•52 min•Ep. 15
At Hedgineer, we believe data has a voice and we are committed to helping you hear what its saying. In this episode, former Goldman Lead Engineer, now Hedgineer Managing Director Jhanvi Virani joins us to discuss how hedge funds can deliver alpha to their investors by leveraging the Hedgineer platform. Gone are the days of siloed data and non existent processes. To thrive as a hedge fund in 2024 and beyond, you need to interact with your data to unlock its true value.Jhanvi explains how her skil...
Aug 19, 2024•32 min•Ep. 14
Just about everything in the world of finance is data. It’s only a matter of time that the early adopters and educated users of AI will outrace their competitors to the top. In Episode 13 of the Hedgineer podcast, host Michael Watson interviews Rob Krzyzanowski, an expert in AI and machine learning with experience at notable firms like Avant, Spring Labs, and Citadel - and also a partner at Hedgineer. Rob offers his best-in-class view on the value of AI, and specifically, how it translates into ...
Aug 05, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 13
The hedge fund industry can learn a lot about monetizing data, especially through the lens of CRM - Customer Relationship Management. In this episode, long-time Salesforce executive Kyle Johnson joins us to discuss how CRM went from a fringe business concept to a core driver of today’s corporate environment. And here’s the key, CRM is really all about data. Names, phone numbers, emails, dates, etc. The genius comes in structuring that information in a format that salespeople can use to drive rev...
Jun 24, 2024•48 min•Ep. 12
Welcome back to the Hedgineer Podcast, where we delve into the fascinating world of AI, data, and technology for hedge funds, asset managers, and prop trading. In this episode, we’re thrilled to have Brian Lee as our guest. Brian, a former colleague, is a true thought leader when it comes to user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) in the hedge fund space. Brian’s journey has been nothing short of remarkable. From his early days at Citadel to his recent role as a senior engineer at Figma—a w...
May 06, 2024•56 min•Ep. 11
In episode 10 of the Hedgineer Podcast, our founder Michael Watson discusses the importance of intellectual property (IP) ownership and how AI can empower domain experts to create scalable businesses and drive innovation. Watch this rare episode to hear more about the impact of AI on service-based entrepreneurship, including his own journey, and the revolution of enterprise operations beyond chat interfaces. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Apr 15, 2024•25 min•Ep. 10
How are the industry’s leading investment firms successfully integrating AI to augment data analysis and fundamental research? We had the opportunity to have Kirk McKeown, founder of Carbon Arc, share how he is using AI to enhance the data collection process and how research teams can leverage intelligence to make better data-driven decisions. Listen to the full episode to learn more. _______________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Hedgineer channel, where ...
Apr 01, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 9
Join us for an in-depth roundtable discussion with the brains behind Hedgineer. Discover how AI and machine learning are revolutionizing risk management in hedge funds. Michael Watson, Brian Mahlstedt, and Gerard Miller explore cutting-edge techniques to identify hidden risks, optimize portfolio construction, and make smarter investment decisions. Listen to the full episode to learn more. _______________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Hedgineer channel, wh...
Mar 18, 2024•32 min•Ep. 8
Join Michael Watson, founder of Hedgineer, as he chats with Carson Boneck, the Chief Data Officer of Balyasny Asset Management. They dive into how data, AI and software is being developed and deployed at hedge funds and asset managers. Michael, who used to Equities Technology and Data Engineering at Citadel, and Carson discuss early successful use cases of AI within asset managers and ideate on where they see the space going. Key Topics Discussed: Carson's serendipitous path to becoming Balyasny...
Mar 04, 2024•48 min•Ep. 7
In the 6th episode of the Hedgineer podcast, Thomas Li, co-founder of Daloopa, delves into the crucial role of precise historical financial data in fundamental investing. The discussion highlights a significant problem faced by financial analysts: the painstaking, time-consuming task of data extraction and management of financial models in Excel. As Michael and Thomas have both experienced first hand this is no easy task, but Daloopa aims to address this issue (and pretty much as solved it) by p...
Jul 19, 2023•49 min
When it comes to using technology to be at the cutting edge, the quality of the data you are using is the name of the game. In trading that some times means spending tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars for data that gives you insight into the world that very few have. In this episode we bring on Rich Brown who has lead data and sourcing teams at some of the most successful and well hedge funds in the world to shed to light on this industry. We talk about the different ways that data is ...
May 16, 2023•48 min•Season 1Ep. 5
In episode 4, Michael invites Sachin Kullkarni on to discuss alterative data and AI. Sachin is currently head of data science at a multi billion dollar credit hedge fund, and previously was at Point72 as a Sector Data Analyst (SDA) in health care. They discuss how alternative data is used in large hedge funds and how they see the space evolving with Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs). They also look back on the alternative data space and how it has evolved over the past 10 years. Mic...
Apr 11, 2023•40 min•Ep. 4
In the third episode of The Hedgineer Podcast, Michael invites equities quant researcher and commodities analyst Lucas (Hog) Rooney to talk about how AI and software engineering can be leveraged for hedge fund investors. In the same way that Python has been a force multiplying tool for Lucas as an investor, LLMs like LLaMa and GPT could be even more impactful for an investor's ability to synthesize information. We talk through how software engineering is developed for fin, how to bridge LLMs int...
Mar 15, 2023•46 min
In this episode of the Hedgineer Podcast, Neel Somani, joins us to discuss his journey from being a software engineer and quantitative researcher for Citadel Commodities to a CEO and founder of Eclipse . We talk about how he was able to pivot after the collapse of Terra Luna and raise $15,000,000 to build out a blockchain as a service protocol that leverages the power of ZK rollups. Careers: Neel talks us through the transition from a software engineer at AirBnB, to a financial engineer and quan...
Mar 07, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 2
In this episode former SpaceX and Citadel software engineer joins us to discuss his experience joining SpaceX out of college to help on the mission of sending mankind to Mars. After writing software for multiple launches, he made a big career decisions to move from LA to New York and work for Citadel, a major hedge fund. There aren't many people who can compare these two incredible organizations, but Brian is one of them. Brian and Michael go back and forth talking about their careers and provid...
Feb 28, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 1
