David Shaw

David Elliot Shaw is an American computer scientist, and billionaire hedge fund manager. He founded D. E. Shaw & Co., a hedge fund company which was once described by Fortune magazine as “the most intriguing and mysterious force on Wall Street”.

• A former computer science professor at Columbia University, David Shaw is the founder of D.E. Shaw, which manages over $50 billion in assets.
• Known for its use of sophisticated mathematical modeling and algorithms, the quantitative hedge fund firm was founded in 1988.
• In 2002, Shaw created an executive committee to oversee the company, and has since stepped away from its day-to-day operations.
• Several former execs have started their own successful businesses, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Two Sigma hedge fund’s John Overdeck.
• Shaw is now chief scientist at D.E. Shaw Research, a computational biochemistry research firm.