XTX Markets

XTX Markets is a privately held UK quantitative-trading firm headquartered in London, founded in 2015 by Alexander Gerko and Zar Amrolia. The firm operates as a principal market-maker across global equity, fixed-income, currency, and commodity markets and reports trading volume that ranks the firm among the principal global currency-market-makers, with substantial market share in spot foreign exchange. XTX Markets is structurally distinctive among quantitative-trading firms for the substantial in-house AI-research investment, the principal sponsorship of the ARC-AGI prize (the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus AI benchmark led by François Chollet and Mike Knoop), and the substantial GPU-compute infrastructure investment that the firm has reported publicly as exceeding 25,000 GPUs as of 2024. As of April 2026, XTX Markets is one of the structurally consequential quantitative-trading firms globally, with the multi-billion-pound annual trading revenue and the principal-AI-research-sponsor positioning that distinguishes the firm from peer quantitative-trading firms.

At a glance

• Founded: 2015 in London by Alexander Gerko (Co-CEO) and Zar Amrolia (Co-CEO).
• Status: Private. Multi-billion-pound annual trading revenue reported in industry coverage.
• Funding: Privately funded through trading revenue and partner-capital structure. Specific revenue and capital figures are not publicly disclosed; UK Companies House filings indicate substantial annual revenue.
• CEO: Alexander Gerko, Co-Founder and Co-CEO. Russian-born British mathematician with PhD in mathematics from Moscow State University.
• Other notable leadership: Zar Amrolia, Co-Founder and Co-CEO. Senior partner-leadership across the trading, technology, and operations organizations.
• Open weights: Yes, partial. Selected research outputs released open-source through GitHub.
• Flagship outputs: Multi-billion-pound trading revenue across global markets; principal sponsorship of the ARC-AGI prize led by François Chollet and Mike Knoop; substantial GPU-compute infrastructure (over 25,000 GPUs as of 2024); active NeurIPS, ICML, and major-AI-conference sponsorship.

Origins

XTX Markets was founded in 2015 by Alexander Gerko and Zar Amrolia, both former quantitative-trading executives at Deutsche Bank. Gerko, a Russian-born British mathematician with PhD in mathematics from Moscow State University, had been a senior quantitative trader at Deutsche Bank focused on currency markets. Amrolia had been Global Head of Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities at Deutsche Bank and held senior trading roles at Goldman Sachs.

The founding business model focused on systematic-quantitative trading across global currency, equity, fixed-income, and commodity markets, with the firm's principal market-share positioning in spot foreign exchange. XTX Markets grew substantially through the 2015 to 2024 period, with annual trading volume in the multi-trillion-dollar range across the principal global markets.

The 2020 to 2024 period saw substantial AI-research investment and infrastructure expansion. The firm reported publicly that its GPU-compute infrastructure exceeded 25,000 GPUs as of 2024, one of the larger private GPU clusters globally outside frontier-AI labs and hyperscale clouds. The substantial AI-research investment has been characterized in industry coverage as positioning XTX as one of the principal commercial AI-research compute consumers in the quantitative-trading industry.

The June 2024 announcement of the ARC-AGI prize, with XTX Markets as the principal sponsor, anchored XTX's positioning as one of the principal AI-research-sponsor organizations in commercial finance. The ARC-AGI prize, with $1 million in prize money, is one of the principal commercial AI benchmarks for general-AI-reasoning research, with the prize structure offering rewards for AI systems achieving performance thresholds on the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus benchmark introduced by François Chollet in 2019.

Mission and strategy

XTX Markets's stated mission combines disciplined quantitative-trading performance with substantive AI-research investment. The strategy combines three threads. First, the systematic-quantitative trading business across global markets, with continued in-house research and engineering investment supporting trading-strategy development. Second, the substantial AI-research investment, including the multi-thousand-GPU compute infrastructure and the in-house AI-research team. Third, the principal-AI-research-sponsor positioning through the ARC-AGI prize and other AI-research-community engagement.

The competitive premise is that combining quantitative-trading commercial revenue with substantial AI-research investment produces a structurally distinctive position relative to peer quantitative-trading firms, and that the AI-research investment can compound into trading-strategy advantages over the medium term.

Models and products

• Systematic-quantitative trading strategies across global markets. The firm's principal commercial business. Multi-trillion-dollar annual trading volume across spot foreign exchange and adjacent global markets.
• Substantial GPU-compute infrastructure. Over 25,000 GPUs as of 2024. One of the larger private GPU clusters globally.
• In-house AI research. Active research-and-engineering organization with substantial AI-and-ML hiring.
• ARC-AGI prize sponsorship. Principal sponsor of the $1 million ARC-AGI prize led by François Chollet and Mike Knoop.
• NeurIPS, ICML, and major-AI-conference sponsorship. Substantial industry-conference presence.

Distribution channels are predominantly direct trading on global financial markets, with the AI-research investment and the ARC-AGI prize sponsorship as the principal externally visible AI-research outputs.

Benchmarks and standing

XTX Markets is a private quantitative-trading firm and does not publish performance metrics publicly. The firm's standing is measured through its multi-billion-pound annual trading revenue (UK Companies House filings indicate the scale), its market-share position in global currency markets, and its AI-research investment scale.

Industry coverage has consistently characterized XTX Markets as one of the principal global quantitative-trading firms, alongside Citadel Securities, Jane Street, Optiver, Hudson River Trading, and other peer firms. The principal-AI-research-sponsor positioning through the ARC-AGI prize has been characterized in industry coverage as a structurally distinctive commitment to AI-research-community engagement.

Leadership

As of April 2026, XTX Markets's senior leadership includes:

• Alexander Gerko, Co-Founder and Co-CEO.
• Zar Amrolia, Co-Founder and Co-CEO.
• Senior partner-leadership across the trading, technology, AI-research, and operations organizations.

Funding and backers

Privately held quantitative-trading firm. Multi-billion-pound annual trading revenue reported in UK Companies House filings. Specific ownership structure and revenue figures are not publicly disclosed.

Industry position

XTX Markets occupies a distinctive position among quantitative-trading firms, with the multi-billion-pound annual trading revenue, the substantial GPU-compute infrastructure, the principal-AI-research-sponsor positioning through the ARC-AGI prize, and the active NeurIPS-and-major-AI-conference engagement. Industry coverage has consistently characterized XTX Markets as one of the principal AI-research-engaged quantitative-trading firms globally, with the ARC-AGI prize sponsorship as a structurally distinctive AI-research-community commitment.

Competitive landscape

• Citadel Securities, Jane Street, Optiver, Hudson River Trading, IMC Trading, Tower Research. Direct quantitative-trading peer firms.
• D. E. Shaw, Renaissance Technologies, Two Sigma, G-Research. Adjacent quantitative-investment-management firms.
• JPMorgan AI Research, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley. Adjacent financial-AI research peers at customer-banking firms.
• OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind. Frontier AI research peers competing for senior AI research talent.
• ARC Prize Foundation. XTX Markets-sponsored AI-research benchmark organization.

Outlook

• The continued trading-revenue performance and global-markets expansion.
• The continued AI-research investment and GPU-compute infrastructure expansion.
• The continued ARC-AGI prize cadence and AI-research-sponsor positioning.
• The recruiting competition with frontier-AI labs for senior AI research talent.

Sources

• XTX Markets official site. Company reference.
• Alexander Gerko LinkedIn. Co-Founder and Co-CEO reference.
• ARC Prize. XTX-sponsored AI-research benchmark.
• François Chollet Wikipedia. ARC-AGI prize co-leader reference.
• XTX Markets Wikipedia. Company history.