DeepMind poker AI trio now powers quant hedge fund profits

Three researchers who once built an AI capable of outplaying professional poker players have turned their attention to the stock market, and the strategy is already showing strong returns. Their Prague-based AI lab, EquiLibre Technologies, has secured a Series A funding round that pushes its valuation to $500 million, according to information obtained by TechCrunch.

The investment was led by Creandum, and while the exact amount remains undisclosed, partner Cameron Sellers confirmed to TechCrunch that this represents the largest single check the venture firm has ever written for a company. The connection between a card table and Wall Street is no coincidence. Both environments are ideal for reinforcement learning, a training method where algorithms learn through a system of rewards. EquiLibre CEO Martin Schmid explained the appeal: “The nice thing about trading and markets is that the scoring is super simple: how much money did the agent make?”

This isn’t a theoretical exercise. Through a partnership with Tower Research Capital, EquiLibre’s algorithms now handle billions of dollars in daily trading volume across the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. The startup reports that its AI agents have performed consistently since their debut on crypto markets in 2025 and have since expanded to traditional stock exchanges. According to the company, the record is unblemished: “a perfect record of zero negative months since inception,” meaning every single month has ended with overall gains.

By targeting quant hedge funds, EquiLibre operates in a space where automation is already the norm, and any successful improvements can translate directly into profits. That potential caught Creandum’s attention. Sellers noted that the total addressable market for trading in financial markets is among the largest on the planet, and many funds have generated returns that dwarf typical venture-backed successes. Still, he emphasized that EquiLibre views itself as “a lab first, not a finance firm.”

Schmid and his co-founders,CTO Rudolf Kadlec and CSO Matej Moravcik,come from academic backgrounds, not finance. That distinction matters to them. “I’m not doing this because I’m excited about making markets efficient,” Schmid said. “I’m doing this because we are all excited about building new things that have never been built before, and this is a lot of fun to build.”

The allure of frontier AI developed by DeepMind alumni has drawn significant venture capital interest. Another recent example is Ineffable Intelligence, which raised $1.1 billion. Most of these companies are based in the U. K., but EquiLibre stands out as an exception. The founding trio were visiting PhD students at Google’s first international AI research office in Edmonton, Alberta, which Alphabet closed in 2023. While there, they created DeepStack, the first AI program to defeat professional players at no-limit poker, or Texas hold ’em. They also collaborated with professors who now serve on the startup’s advisory board, including Rich Sutton, who received the Turing Award in 2024 for his work on reinforcement learning.

To launch their company, the founders returned to their home country, Czechia. “This is where we had a lot of people we had worked with, and there was a large Czech diaspora at Google and other places,” Schmid said. “These were our friends, so we told them, ‘Hey, guys, we are moving back to Prague, do you want to join us?’”

That decision helped EquiLibre assemble its initial team in 2022, and it now employs 25 people. According to Schmid, the location continues to provide advantages. Compared to San Francisco, “It’s much easier to keep the good people here, because there’s not a new sexy AI thing happening every two months.” While EquiLibre isn’t the only AI startup in Prague,BottleCap AI shares the same building,it stands out as a notable talent hub in the region. The company next plans to scale its compute infrastructure, aiming to bring online one of the largest compute clusters in Central and Eastern Europe.

EquiLibre has not disclosed its total funding to date, but Schmid confirmed two earlier rounds. Pre-seed backers included Credo, a CEE-focused VC that also invested in ElevenLabs and UiPath. According to Dealroom data, a $10 million seed round led by Blossom Capital valued the company at $140 million. Sellers confirmed that the Series A valuation of $500 million represents a significant jump, but it comes as market sentiment has shifted favorably toward reinforcement learning, including in trading. “When we started, people were skeptical,” Schmid said. Now, RL is the standard. “Because we started four years back, we believe we are ahead.”

Still, the risk of being leapfrogged by competitors is real. Jane Street, a trading giant, states it already uses RL with LLMs and “whatever else we need to train good models.” It also claims access to “tens of thousands of high-end GPUs.” EquiLibre, by contrast, aims to squeeze more compute from fewer chips, focusing on efficiency. “Get more from less,” Schmid said.

Given Jane Street’s profitability, EquiLibre will need to play its cards carefully to achieve its goal of being recognized as “the AI lab in trading.” But unlike poker, Schmid sees room for multiple winners: “This is not a winner-takes-all market.”