D. E. Shaw

D. E. Shaw was a computer scientist's bet that finance is a computation problem. David Shaw left the secretive quantitative unit at Morgan Stanley and in 1988 staffed his new firm with scientists and engineers rather than traders, running it closer to a research institute than a trading floor. In its early years its order flow reportedly touched a meaningful slice of NYSE volume, helping drag the market toward electronic structure.

The firm splits into systematic strategies, refined over more than three decades of computational research, and discretionary ones spanning public and private markets, from distressed debt to private equity. Both lean on shared data infrastructure. Eric Schmidt, the former Google chairman and a long-time investor, bought a stake in 2015. Two Sigma's founders came out of these halls, a lineage that says plenty about the place.