DeepMind Trio: Poker AI Wizards Now Powering Quant Fund Profits.

Three former DeepMind researchers, creators of an AI that famously defeated humans in poker, have now channeled that same groundbreaking technology into the realm of stock trading, a venture that appears to be yielding significant returns. Their Prague-based artificial intelligence laboratory, EquiLibre Technologies, has reportedly achieved a valuation of $500 million following a Series A funding round of an undisclosed sum, as uncovered by TechCrunch.

The investment round was spearheaded by Creandum, and while the venture capital firm also opted not to disclose the precise amount, Vice President Cameron Sellers confirmed to TechCrunch that it marked the firm's "largest single investment" ever made into a company. The inherent connection between poker and Wall Street lies in their exceptional suitability for reinforcement learning (RL), an AI training methodology where self-learning models are incentivized through a system of rewards. EquiLibre CEO Martin Schmid articulated this synergy, stating, "The nice thing about trading and markets is that the scoring is super simple: how much money did the agent make?"

These are not merely theoretical gains. In collaboration with the quantitative trading firm Tower Research Capital, EquiLibre’s sophisticated algorithms are actively executing trades amounting to billions in daily volume across the S&P 500 and NASDAQ. The startup asserts a robust performance from its agents since their introduction to crypto markets in 2025 and subsequently to stock exchanges, boasting "a perfect record of zero negative months since inception," signifying consistent monthly positive returns on their investments.

By deploying its AI within quantitative hedge funds, the startup operates in a sector where automation is prevalent, and successful innovations can rapidly translate into substantial profits. This lucrative potential made EquiLibre particularly attractive to Creandum, as Sellers explained, emphasizing that "The potential total addressable market of trading in the financial markets is one of the biggest on earth, and there are countless funds over the years that have generated quantums of profit that make most venture-backed successes look small." Yet, he highlighted EquiLibre's explicit self-definition as "a lab first, not a finance firm." Schmid and his co-founders — CTO Rudolf Kadlec and CSO Matej Moravcik — lack a background in finance, and Schmid told TechCrunch that their motivations stem from innovation, not market efficiency. "I’m not doing this because I’m excited about making markets efficient. 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," Schmid said.

The pursuit of frontier AI by DeepMind alumni is a keenly watched area by venture capitalists. Another recent example is Ineffable Intelligence, which recently secured $1.1 billion in funding. While most of these ventures are based in the U.K., EquiLibre stands as a notable exception to this geographical trend.

In the case of EquiLibre’s founding trio, they were visiting PhD students at the Google-owned company’s inaugural international AI research office in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, an office that Alphabet later closed in 2023. It was there that they developed DeepStack, the first AI program to conquer professional players in no-limit Texas Hold'em poker. They also collaborated with professors who now form part of the startup’s distinguished advisory board, including Rich Sutton, who received the Turing Award in 2024 for his seminal work on reinforcement learning. To establish their company, EquiLibre’s founders decided to relocate to their home country, Czechia. Schmid explained, "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. These were our friends, so we told them, 'Hey, guys, we are moving back to Prague, do you want to join us?'" This approach helped EquiLibre assemble its initial team in 2022, growing to its current headcount of 25. Schmid further noted that this choice of location continues to pay dividends, observing that 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."

EquiLibre is not, however, the only burgeoning AI startup in the city; BottleCap AI operates from the same building.

Nevertheless, EquiLibre remains one of the more prominent AI companies in the region for attracting top talent. Its next strategic move involves scaling its compute infrastructure, with plans to bring online what is anticipated to be one of the largest compute clusters in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).

While the startup also declined to disclose its total funding to date, Schmid revealed that it had previously secured two other funding rounds. Pre-seed backers included Credo, a CEE-focused VC firm known for its investments in companies like ElevenLabs and UiPath. According to Dealroom data, EquiLibre’s $10 million seed round was led by Blossom Capital, valuing the company at $140 million.

Sellers confirmed that the $500 million Series A valuation marked a significant leap. However, he noted that this valuation comes at a time when conditions have become increasingly favorable for reinforcement learning (RL), particularly in the trading sector. "When we started, people were skeptical," Schmid recalled, but now, he observed, RL has become the industry standard. He added, "Because we started four years back, we believe we are ahead."

Despite their advantageous position, there remains a risk that the startup could be outpaced by competitors. For instance, the formidable trading giant Jane Street publicly states its current application of reinforcement learning in conjunction with large language models, "or whatever else we need to train good models." Jane Street also boasts "tens of thousands of high-end GPUs," whereas EquiLibre, as Schmid indicated, is focused on optimizing computational efficiency to "get more from less" from a significantly smaller array of chips.

Considering the immense profitability of firms like Jane Street, EquiLibre will need to strategically navigate its path to achieve its ambition of becoming recognized as "the AI lab in trading." However, Schmid posited that unlike poker, this market may not necessarily produce losers, concluding, "This is not a winner-takes-all market."