Millennium Management is expanding its presence in Australia, with the $97bn hedge fund building out a Sydney-based team and taking sizeable positions in Australian companies as it develops its local operations, according to a report by Capital Brief.

Millennium president and chief operating officer Ajay Nagpal and Benjamin Williams, the firm's head of business development for Asia, were in Sydney earlier this month to mark the opening of a new office in the city's central business district.

The New York-based multi-strategy manager now has around 20 employees in Australia, following a series of hires and investment moves that have increased its footprint in the country's financial market.

Among the recent additions is Shaurya Visen, who joined Millennium in July after serving as Bank of America's head of Australian industrials research. The firm has also agreed to provide seed capital to a new long-short equity fund launched by former Perpetual portfolio manager Anthony Aboud.

Millennium's Sydney operation is still relatively opaque compared with its established offices elsewhere in Asia-Pacific. The Australian office does not appear among the firm's five publicly listed locations in the region and does not have a publicly advertised telephone number or email address, with media enquiries directed to the firm's London operation.

US regulatory filings nevertheless provide an indication of the scale of Millennium's investment activity in Australian-listed companies.

The hedge fund's latest quarterly holdings disclosure, covering the three months to the end of June, shows significant positions in two Australian technology businesses listed on Nasdaq.

Millennium held shares worth about $131m in Australian neocloud company Sharon AI, equivalent to roughly 5% of the company, according to S&P Capital IQ data. It also held about $63m of shares in Australian rival IREN.