While modern AI firms like OpenAI and Anthropic are all the rage, hedge fund Millennium has an appreciation for the classics. It recently hired a Vaibhava Goel, who spent 16 years in IBM’s marquee AI team.
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Goel has joined Millennium as its head of machine learning research, based in New York. He previously worked in IBM’s Watson AI research group which built the supercomputer of the same name. Goel left IBM in 2018 to join Pryon, a conversational AI startup founded by Igor Jablokov, who led the team that founded Watson’s predecessor.
In his time at IBM, Goel published papers across a range of AI-focused subjects. His most recent work was focused on deep neural networks and speech processing.
Watson (the computer) was first made famous in the early 2010s for an appearance on the game show Jeopardy, where it beat the show’s two most successful players. The technology was then used for industry applications in sectors like healthcare and finance, although its business unit in the former was ultimately sold due to ramping costs.
At Millennium, Goel is joining the team led by Gideon Mann, who joined from Google in 2023 as head of AI. The team is focused on scaling AI initiatives across the firm.
Millennium may be hoping its AI activities bear fruit soon. After finishing 2024 with a solid 15% return, the fund has had a wobbly start to 2025. Bloomberg reported this month that it was down 1.2% in March, and down 2% for the first quarter of the year.
Millennium declined to comment.
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