Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management is planning to raise approximately $1bn for a new hedge fund focusing on AI, marking the firm’s first new hedge fund in decades, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Bloomberg’s sources confirmed that the new fund will engage in both long and short positions on AI hardware and semiconductor companies globally. Point72’s existing offerings include a primary hedge fund and several venture capital vehicles.
The fund is expected to launch either late this year or in early 2025 and will be managed by portfolio manager Eric Sanchez. It will draw capital from external investors, Point72 employees and Cohen himself, who will also play a supervisory role.
Unlike Point72’s main market-neutral fund, this new vehicle will have a more flexible investment approach, potentially holding some longer-biased positions that are not typical in the main fund.
In 2021, Point72 launched Hyperscale, its inaugural private equity fund that leverages AI to enhance efficiency in its acquisitions. The firm also established Point72 Ventures, which invests exclusively Cohen’s capital in early-stage technology startups, in 2016.
In a CNBC interview in April, Cohen predicted that AI would significantly alter business operations and yield substantial cost savings, adding that there would “be big winners and big losers” and comparing the current AI-driven innovation surge to the tech boom of the 1990s.
