Các quỹ phòng hộ định lượng tại Trung Quốc tăng tốc thu hút nhân tài AI
Trung Quốc đang tận dụng việc Mỹ siết chặt chính sách visa và cắt giảm học bổng thời Tổng thống Trump để thu hút sinh viên và tiến sĩ Trung Quốc quay về làm việc trong các quỹ phòng hộ định lượng (quant hedge funds).
Mingshi, công ty quản lý tài sản 2,5 tỷ USD, đã chuyển các thực tập sinh thành nhân viên toàn thời gian, đồng thời khởi động chương trình “Lighthouse Calling” để chiêu mộ sinh viên bị ảnh hưởng bởi chính sách Mỹ.
Trong năm học 2023–2024, có hơn 277.000 sinh viên Trung Quốc đang học tại Mỹ, chiếm 24,5% tổng sinh viên quốc tế, trong đó 16% học sau đại học ở các ngành STEM.
Trung Quốc hiện có thị trường nội địa trị giá hơn 11.000 tỷ USD, đứng thứ hai thế giới. Quỹ định lượng nội địa đạt quy mô 837 tỷ nhân dân tệ (117 tỷ USD) vào cuối năm 2024, trong đó 768 tỷ đầu tư vào cổ phiếu.
Cạnh tranh trong ngành rất gay gắt, với mức lương do các quỹ Trung Quốc đưa ra cao hơn nhiều công ty tài chính lớn của Mỹ.
Số quỹ có trên 10 tỷ nhân dân tệ tăng vọt từ dưới 5 quỹ năm 2017 lên gần 40 vào tháng 7/2025.
Các quỹ như QuantPi và Goku Singapore chủ động tuyển dụng tài năng từ Harvard, MIT và các trường top tại Mỹ, Anh, đồng thời mở văn phòng tại Hồng Kông và Singapore để phục vụ khách quốc tế.
Trung Quốc đang tích cực tích hợp AI trong đầu tư định lượng, như DeepSeek được đánh giá là “game changer” trong ngành. Các chiến lược đầu tư được tự động hóa thông qua mô hình AI đánh giá dữ liệu tài chính và cảm xúc thị trường.
Goku có 2 tỷ USD tài sản đầu tư, trong đó 5% từ nước ngoài và kỳ vọng trở thành “Two Sigma của châu Á”.
Dù quy định về giao dịch tần suất cao bị siết tại Trung Quốc, các công ty lớn vẫn mở rộng ra nước ngoài để tìm thị trường mới, giao dịch cổ phiếu Mỹ, Nhật và hàng hóa toàn cầu.
25 quỹ Trung Quốc đã có giấy phép loại 9 tại Hồng Kông, đủ điều kiện quản lý tài sản tại thị trường này tính đến tháng 7/2025.
Các quỹ nhỏ chưa đủ nguồn lực để mở rộng, tập trung gia tăng quy mô tài sản trước khi quốc tế hóa.
📌 Trung Quốc đang tăng tốc chiêu mộ nhân tài từ Mỹ để phát triển quỹ đầu tư định lượng, tận dụng khủng hoảng visa và học bổng. Với hơn 837 tỷ nhân dân tệ tài sản trong quỹ định lượng và sự trỗi dậy của AI như DeepSeek, các quỹ như Mingshi và Goku đang mở rộng mạnh mẽ ra quốc tế. Việc tích hợp AI và nguồn nhân lực chất lượng cao sẽ là đòn bẩy giúp Trung Quốc thu hẹp khoảng cách với Mỹ trong đầu tư tài chính định lượng.
--> Quỹ phòng hộ định lượng (quantitative hedge fund) là một loại quỹ đầu tư sử dụng các mô hình toán học, thuật toán và dữ liệu lớn (big data) để đưa ra quyết định đầu tư, thay vì dựa trên phân tích cảm tính hay đánh giá của con người như trong đầu tư truyền thống.
"Phòng hộ" (hedge) nghĩa là quỹ này không chỉ đầu tư kiếm lời, mà còn cố gắng giảm rủi ro (hedging risk) bằng cách đa dạng hóa danh mục, sử dụng công cụ phái sinh như quyền chọn, hợp đồng tương lai,...
"Định lượng" (quantitative) tức là toàn bộ chiến lược đầu tư được máy tính xử lý dựa trên thuật toán, phân tích dữ liệu giá, khối lượng giao dịch, chỉ báo kỹ thuật, dữ liệu thị trường,...
China’s quant hedge funds stock up on talent – at US expense – to fuel expansion, AI use
Trump upheaval plays into the hands of talent-hungry firms in the growing sector, as many eye markets beyond the mainland
Yuan Yu, founder of Shanghai-based quantitative hedge fund Mingshi, recognised an opportunity when several intern prospects studying in the US said they were struggling to complete their PhDs amid university funding cuts and stricter visa policies under President Donald Trump.
“They told us that their supervisor’s funding had been cut, so they couldn’t continue their studies,” said Yuan, whose investment firm manages US$2.5 billion in assets. “They felt lost and didn’t know what to do. This prompted us to consider extending our internship offers to full-time job offers.”
By seizing the chance to snap up the candidates, Mingshi echoed a larger trend in China’s rapidly evolving quant hedge fund sector. The US upheaval in academia – and the government’s antipathy towards foreign students – is helping such funds secure the brain power that they will need to harness China’s breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) and fuel their expansion beyond the domestic market.
Companies like Mingshi often compete against local rivals and larger, more established global giants for the world’s top scientists and engineers, many of whom would have stayed in the US in the past.
“We are hungry for top talent,” Yuan said. “In the past two to three years, we have been offering salaries that are higher than some of the top US firms.”
The sector has been growing rapidly. The yuan-denominated market is now the world’s second largest, with a combined capitalisation of more than US$11 trillion, feeding demand for financial products aimed at wealth preservation or hedging.
Quant products managed by domestic hedge fund firms totalled 837 billion yuan (US$117 billion) at the end of 2024, with 768 billion yuan invested in stocks, according to Citic Securities. Such products from mutual-fund firms, mostly index-reinforcing offerings, held 295 billion yuan, it said.
Chinese quant funds with at least 10 billion yuan in assets under management
Quant investing uses advanced mathematical modelling, computer systems and data analysis to calculate the optimal probability of executing profitable trades. It is different from traditional investment approaches like value or trend investing, in which decisions are more subjective and based on human judgement.
China has a vast pool of talent abroad. During the 2023-2024 academic year, more than 277,000 Chinese students were enrolled in US universities, accounting for 24.5 per cent of the 1.13 million international students, according to the annual Open Doors report from the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the US State Department. Chinese students made up 16 per cent of about 820,000 graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the US, the report said.
At the height of tensions with Beijing, Trump revoked Chinese students’ visas and stepped up scrutiny of applications from mainland China and Hong Kong as part of a tighter immigration policy stance.
“This presents a valuable opportunity for us,” Yuan said, adding that his firm aimed to be in the top tier in China and Asia. “Also, as a Chinese company, we feel a sense of social responsibility to help share this burden.”
In June, Mingshi launched a recruitment initiative called Lighthouse Calling to offer full-time jobs and internships to students whose studies abroad were disrupted by the changing US policies.
“Whenever you briefly lose your way, there’s always a lighthouse to guide you towards a new path,” materials related to the programme said. “In the face of global academic changes and uncertainty, we light a beacon of hope for outstanding individuals like you.”
Yuan – a graduate of a US university – founded Mingshi in 2010. As one of the top players in the industry, the firm has been expanding overseas since 2020, opening an office in Hong Kong to serve foreign clients in the US, Japan, South Korea and the Middle East who are interested in investing in China’s stock market.
Another quant firm luring overseas talent is Shanghai QuantPi Investment, which has many employees from top universities in the US, UK and other countries.
“For Chinese people, the living environment at home feels more familiar and there is a stronger sense of cultural identity,” said CEO Sun Lin. “In my view, this is also one of the greatest advantages that China’s quantitative investment industry has over its international peers – we have the largest talent pool in the world.”
China’s ascent in AI, symbolised by the rise of DeepSeek earlier this year, has given a push to the quant investment industry and increased demand for tech talent, as more firms look to integrate the latest AI innovations into their investment infrastructure.
Jack Liu, a trader at a Shanghai-based quant hedge fund firm focused on financial and commodity futures trading, uses AI to help him filter through information and news headlines that can facilitate trading, though his trading strategies and executions are still based on human decisions.
Xufunds Investment Management deploys AI to create models for a bottom-up stock picking strategy, according to Wang Chen, a partner at the Shanghai-based money manager. His AI-powered model generates scores for the stocks in the pool for reference after analysing factors such as corporate earnings, management integrity and market sentiment.
Ken Chung, CEO of Goku Singapore, who said his firm started to incorporate AI into workflows in 2018, hailed DeepSeek’s development as a “game changer”.
“The development of Deep Seek gives us access to [AI technologies] which are completely different,” he said. “It greatly expands the potential use of AI in our investment process.”
Yuan Yu, founder of Shanghai-based quantitative hedge fund Mingshi. Photo: Handout
Meanwhile, a Beijing crackdown on quant investing is making the sector’s biggest players to look overseas for new opportunities.
High-frequency trading took some blame from the stock-market watchdog and individual investors for a two-year market downturn, prompting China’s three bourses to issue specific rules this year to rein in the practice. They pledged more oversight of unusual swings caused by high-frequency trading and levied more fees on such trades.
High-frequency trades make up about 30 per cent of stock transactions in China’s markets, compared with 50 per cent in some developed markets, according to the China Securities Regulatory Commission. China’s bourse rules define high-frequency trading as placing or retracting more than 20,000 orders by a single investor per day, or at least 300 orders per second.
About 5 per cent of Goku’s more than US$2 billion in assets under investment comes from outside mainland China, and the firm set up its first overseas office in Singapore to serve international clients and to trade in other markets, according to Chung. The company received its Singapore licence in January.
China’s huge market represented a significant proportion of the world’s equity-market liquidity, which presented the firm with an opportunity to become the DE Shaw or Two Sigma of Asia, he said, referring to two prominent hedge funds known for quantitative investing.
“Any firm that has any chance of becoming a world-class quant born out of Asia needs to come out of A shares,” he said, referring to yuan-denominated shares traded on mainland exchanges. “Without it, it’s impossible, because China is so big. It’s the biggest market in Asia.”
Goku now has five employees in Singapore. It had not specifically targeted Chinese graduates from US universities, but was “definitely open to it”, Chung said.
In the near term, Goku may consider an office in Hong Kong. “If we have talents that prefer Hong Kong over Shanghai or Singapore, then we will open an office there,” he said. The company started to trade H shares – Hong Kong-listed shares of Chinese companies – in May.
Twenty-five Chinese quant hedge funds have obtained asset-management licences in Hong Kong, according to Simuwang, a Shenzhen-based data provider.
Chinese quant funds licensed to operate in Hong Kong
Year/number of funds
201720182019202020212022202320242025051015202530
2025 figure as of July 23
Figures represent Type 9 licences from Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission, which authorise the holder to conduct asset-management activities, including portfolio and fund management
Source: Simuwang
SCMP Graphics
Chinese quant funds licensed to operate in Hong Kong
Still, the hiring boom was limited to the industry’s biggest players for now, according to Liu, the trader at the Shanghai-based quant hedge fund firm. Smaller ones were still focused on boosting their asset sizes, he said.
“The normal practice for the big firms is to set up branches in Hong Kong or Singapore that will be used to trade US stocks and futures, Japanese or Singaporean stocks, or futures on the London Metal Exchange,” he said. “But the development is only at the very initial stage, and I haven’t heard that any of these firms has already had success in the overseas businesses.”
A degree-holder in electronics who returned from the US in 2014, Liu joined the quant hedge fund industry after working at internet companies for two years.
“It’s now easier for domestic firms to compete for talent, particularly graduates or professionals overseas, given the China-US situation,” he said. “Lots of people have returned to China and taken up jobs in the domestic quant investment industry. Some firms may not need people urgently at the moment, but they take advantage of the opportunity to reserve talents for business expansion in the future.”
Demand for quant investment products has been on the rise in China in recent years to cater to different types of investors, as actively managed funds from mutual-fund firms have gradually lost clout because of erratic performance, according to Xufunds Investment’s Wang.
“The competition for active fund products is pretty intense now, and the performance varies significantly,” he said. “Therefore, we’ve seen the rise of quant products that are typically stripped of the subjective factors and based on big data analysis. China’s markets have lots of liquidity, and that’s conducive to the development of quant investments.”
For Liu, the return of overseas talent is a good thing for the sector.
“They can definitely help to close the gap between China and the US in the quant-investment area with their expertise and knowledge,” he said. “That will be a boost to the industry.”
