The British global multi strategy investment manager Qube Research & Technologies, or QRT, has opened its first office in Houston, Texas. It is the firm’s first venture into the U.S. market since it was incorporated in London back in 2016. Today we look at some of the latest challenges the firm is facing and why it has decided to look at Texas.
Bloomberg reported a few weeks ago that Naveen Arora, the co-head of U.S. power trading at Goldman Sachs was joining QRT. Naveen is joining to oversee the buildout of QRT in the U.S. market, focusing predominantly on commodities.
Qube Grows its Global Footprint and Assets Under Management in 2025
For a hedge fund it’s unusual to see a lot of news emanating from the firm. However, in the case of QRT this is what is happening. Since the commencement of the year there are various stories about how the company is scaling. We investigated some of them to help understand QRT’s growth trajectory better.
In February QRT was reported to be building a high-tech data centre in Iceland. This new facility is purported to help enhance QRT’s ability to process vast amounts of market data. Something that the hundreds of technologists in the 1,400+ headcount business are involved in. Last year QRT hired 232 IT professionals to give an example.
A LinkedIn post from 5 months ago shows another step forward for the hedge fund. It announced that it opened a new office in Wroclaw, Poland, a city known for its top-tier tech talent and innovation.
How Far Can Qube Grow?
Another story from Bloomberg earlier this year stated how only 1 percent of hedge funds manage assets of more than $20 billion. QRT is aiming to hit $30 billion of AUM in the future.
Just like D.E.Shaw and others, QRT has invested heavily into tech talent. Its global locations reflect its hunt for talent – Singapore, Sydney, Shanghai, Zurich, Paris, Hong Kong, London, Dubai, Mumbai, Geneva, Aarhus (Denmark) and now Wroclaw.
It’s not all plain sailing for QRT in 2025 though. The firm had a position in Trump Media as recently as April. Trump Media is 53 percent owned by President Trump. The problem with this is that QRT was looking to short Trump Media, betting that the company would continue to struggle in 2025. On the 17th of April, when the Wall Street Journal covered the story, Trump Media stock was at approximately $20. Today it has slumped, just as QRT’s researchers predicted. The slump is not calamitous, the stock is trading at $18.45 today. TradingView lists the stock, and analyst sentiment on the site is firmly ‘Sell’ as of time of writing.
QRT is not frightened to take on the big boys of Wall Street or take a significant short position against part of Donald Trump’s empire. The firm knows that to continue to grow it needs to invest in tech talent and technology. It also sees the huge potential in Texas, just like the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have. Not to mention the newly formed Texas Stock Exchange.
Today the name QRT might not be a household brand amongst Wall Street investors. Expect to see more stories about QRT in the future. In the meantime, the founders Pierre-Yves Morlat and Laurent Laizet, will continue to grow a company that is clearly going to disrupt capital markets more in the future. They have already started to look at crypto through the firm’s crypto-focused Moebius fund.
Author: Andy Samu
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