Teza Technologies Winner

Teza Technologies was founded as a high-frequency trading (HFT) shop back in 2009 by astrophysicist Misha Malyshev, Ph.D. From its origin, the firm always emphasized the accumulation of proprietary data. The HFT colocation infrastructure and proprietary HFT-based data sets and processing tools allow the firm to ingest one terabyte of market data each day. The data collected by Teza’s operations are not available for purchase via any vendors.

While other HFT players exited the space as returns compressed and alpha opportunities diminished, Misha and the Teza team hypothesized that the years of pristine market microstructure data they’d collected in the HFT business could be used to develop longer-term signals. In 2017, Teza sold off its HFT business but maintained the associated colocation infrastructure and data processing tools to reorient itself as a quant-based asset manager.

In May 2022, as many individuals and families across Europe were displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Teza established an office in Yerevan, Armenia, to hire from a growing pool of talented technologists in need of stable employment, as Armenia became a refugee hub. In doing so, the firm became the first U.S.-based investment manager with a presence in Yerevan.

Finalists

• Lumenai Investments LLC

• Tectonic Investors