A new hedge fund founded by Instacart co-founder Apoorva Mehta has put artificial intelligence at the center of investment decision-making, replacing traditional portfolio managers with autonomous software agents.
Mehta, 39, established the Palo Alto, California-based firm, named Abundance, last year with a team composed of quantitative researchers, engineers and AI specialists who build and maintain the firm’s models. The operation uses thousands of bots that comb the internet for trade ideas, perform research, select stocks for long and short positions, size bets and execute trades.
According to Mehta, Abundance currently runs stock-picking strategies that are operated entirely by AI. He also said some strategies still under development will include human participation. The firm’s stated goal is to move ultimately toward artificial intelligence running the fund in its entirety, though a transition path includes hybrid approaches for certain strategies.
Abundance completed a $100 million seed equity financing and primarily trades its own capital at present. Mehta said the firm plans to accept outside capital in the future, but indicated that external money is not a current focus.
The firm’s on-the-ground team is compact: Mehta described it as a 10-person group that makes long and short equity bets, while the wider technical stack is driven by automated agents. The team is also developing plans to broaden its exposure beyond equities into other asset classes.
Mehta contrasted the capabilities of AI with human investors, arguing that people face practical limits in the number of opportunities they can monitor, the depth of analysis they can perform and the volume of high-quality decisions they can make. He said that even highly skilled investors keep much of their process inside their minds, and that AI changes that dynamic.
The firm’s structure and technology emphasis reflect an attempt to scale research and execution through automation, with a mix of fully autonomous strategies already active and additional, hybrid approaches progressing through development.
Key points
- Abundance uses thousands of AI agents to handle idea generation, research, position selection, sizing and trade execution - impacts equity markets and the asset management sector.
- The firm raised $100 million in seed equity and currently trades mostly its own capital, with plans to accept external capital later - relevant to institutional investment flows and private fund-raising dynamics.
- A compact 10-person team manages long and short stock bets while developing strategies to expand into other asset classes - affecting quantitative and AI-focused investment strategies.
Risks and uncertainties
- Several strategies are still under development and currently include human involvement, creating uncertainty about the timing and scope of a full transition to AI-driven management - relevant to the asset management sector.
- The firm presently trades primarily its own capital and has only plans to accept outside money in the future, leaving unclear when or how external investors will participate - relevant to potential allocators and institutional capital flows.
- Abundance intends to expand into other asset classes, but details and timelines for that expansion remain under development - introducing uncertainty for broader market exposure.