Ex-Goldman, Capital Group executives launch AI investment firm

Former Goldman Sachs and Capital Group executives have launched Poesis, a Menlo Park, California-based investment firm that uses autonomous artificial-intelligence agents to research, select and trade equities. Its first strategy, AI Clarity, has managed the founders’ capital since August and is expected to accept outside investors in early 2027.

Poesis was founded by Alex Popa, a former portfolio manager at Capital Group, and Charles Elkan, who previously led machine learning at Goldman Sachs. The firm is raising capital for AI Clarity, which invests in 80 to 100 large-cap U.S.-listed stocks and targets an average holding period of about three years.

The AI agents use quantitative models to study companies, identify investment opportunities and recommend trades. Human portfolio managers set risk limits and approve transactions. The system can also hedge market exposure by shorting equity indexes when it detects a possible market decline.

AI Clarity fell 0.3% in October, compared with a decline of nearly 1% for the S&P 500, according to people familiar with the strategy’s performance. The strategy seeks to outperform broad equity markets while limiting losses during major downturns. It will charge a 1% management fee and a 20% performance fee.

Poesis employs 10 people, including engineers and data scientists. Its founders plan to add more investment strategies and eventually establish a multistrategy hedge fund for institutional investors. They project that the firm could manage billions of dollars with fewer than 100 employees, compared with the larger workforces at established multistrategy firms such as Citadel and Millennium Management.

Poesis has tested fully autonomous AI trading agents in concentrated long-term equity and market-neutral quantitative strategies. Both systems operated within their assigned investment mandates, according to the source material.