{"id":1051926,"date":"2026-09-09T00:26:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1051926\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T00:26:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:26:25","slug":"hedge-funder-brian-kelly-built-bracket22-to-be-powered-entirely-by-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1051926\/","title":{"rendered":"Hedge funder Brian Kelly built Bracket22 to be powered entirely by AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"InlineVideo-videoThumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/108359130-260904_cn_03_con_AI_Hedge_Fund_rc00_01_10_16Still004.png\" alt=\"Inside Bracket22, a trading firm powered by Al agents\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Hedge-fund manager Brian Kelly has his staff working 24\/7, yet his payroll costs are a fraction of what they once were. <\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s because Kelly \u2014 who previously ran a cryptocurrency hedge fund \u2014 created his new trading firm, Bracket22, to be powered entirely by agentic artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I used to have about seven or eight employees all around the world. A lot of them were based in New York,&#8221; Kelly told CNBC. &#8220;Between their salaries and compute and healthcare and everything like that, my payroll was well into the millions of dollars per year.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Factoring in things such as office space and bonuses, Kelly estimated his total labor-related costs before he began using AI were roughly $5 million a year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now, when I&#8217;m using AI, I run somewhere around [$30,000] to $40,000 a year, total. And that&#8217;s with every AI agent, that&#8217;s with all my compute, that&#8217;s with everything I need to completely replicate a hedge fund &#8230; with AI,&#8221; he said. <\/p>\n<p>Bracket22 is a stark example of a growing reality on Wall Street as firms test the benefits and limits of AI in finance. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"InlineVideo-videoThumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/108360091-17889044161788904412-48258114714-1080pnbcnews.jpg\" alt=\"Trader Brian Kelly builds firm using only AI agents instead of employees\"\/><\/p>\n<p>JPMorgan Chase CEO <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/jamie-dimon\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jamie Dimon<\/a> said in February the tech was already <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/02\/24\/jpm-ceo-jamie-dimon-ai-reshaping-workforce-redeployment.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reshaping<\/a> his workforce and that his bank had &#8220;huge redeployment&#8221; plans for its employees. The company plans to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/06\/09\/jpmorgan-chase-ai-agents.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">launch AI agents<\/a>  later this year that it has said can work autonomously for hours at a time. <\/p>\n<p>Morgan Stanley is similarly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/06\/03\/ai-agents-morgan-stanley-wealth-management-funnel.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">funneling some work<\/a> to AI. <\/p>\n<p>There has been some hesitation, though. A Goldman Sachs partner, for example, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/08\/24\/goldman-sachs-ai-partner-danger-skills.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">recently warned<\/a> of the dangers in letting AI erode bankers&#8217; reasoning skills. <\/p>\n<p>Kelly \u2014 a former trader on CNBC&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/fastmoney\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fast Money<\/a>&#8221; \u2014 closed his cryptocurrency hedge fund in early 2025. Later that year, he began testing out uses of artificial intelligence. Bracket22 invests only Kelly&#8217;s own capital and trades cryptocurrencies, stocks and commodities.<\/p>\n<p>Brian Kelly founded Bracket22, a trading firm powered entirely by agentic AI.<\/p>\n<p>CNBC<\/p>\n<p>Kelly introduced CNBC to several of his AI agents, each with its own distinct role. A bot called &#8220;Steffi&#8221; is in charge of technical analysis. &#8220;Desmond&#8221; handles quantitative strategies, and &#8220;Houston&#8221; is, fittingly, mission control and pulls all the pieces together. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve crafted each of these agents to be a specialist in their field,&#8221; Kelly said. &#8220;I wanted to isolate them and I wanted to get their unbiased view on what I&#8217;m doing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And then I use my human judgment and human insight to make the final decision,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>Kelly said he would estimate he&#8217;s &#8220;at least 10 times more productive&#8221; with his agents. And while he&#8217;s replaced his staff with AI, he said the real opportunity lies in augmenting human workforces. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you take a staff of 100, [with AI] you&#8217;ve got a staff of a thousand,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s not necessarily just, hey, you can replace everybody with AI agents. You can make your existing employees at least 10 times \u2014 maybe more \u2014 more productive.&#8221; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hedge-fund manager Brian Kelly has his staff working 24\/7, yet his payroll costs are a fraction of what&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1051927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21],"tags":[691,738,11732,44753,81,304,45003,16236,21279,16209,119985,13201,2578,158,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1051926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-breaking-news-technology","tag-brian-kelly","tag-business-news","tag-generative-ai","tag-goldman-sachs-bdc-inc","tag-hedge-funds","tag-jamie-dimon","tag-jpmorgan-chase-co","tag-labor-economy","tag-morgan-stanley","tag-personnel","tag-technology","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117238250386166173","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1051927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}