Last year was a banner year for many hedge funds and quant shops, and Greenwich, CT-based Applied Quantitative Research—better known as AQR—was no exception. Its assets under management have ballooned to $187 billion, increasing $73 billion in 2025. All three of its billionaire founders saw their net worths double.

Cliff Asness, AQR’s PhD-holding chief investment officer and largest individual shareholder with an estimated 30% stake, is now worth $6.3 billion, making him the 664th richest in the world. Cofounders John Liew and David Kabiller each saw their net worths jump to over $2 billion. The three founders—who started AQR in 1998 after working together at Goldman Sachs Asset Management—are all heavily invested in AQR’s funds, tying their own fortunes to the firm’s performance.

Last year AQR’s core multi-strategy Apex fund, which has $6.7 billion in assets, returned 19.4%, while its Delphi long-short fund (also $6.7 billion in assets) returned 16.7%, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked for anonymity to share private information. On average over the last five years the two funds have each returned 16.6% on an annualized basis, the person added. (For comparison, the S&P 500 returned 14.4% annualized over that same time period). Among the firm’s more than two dozen open-ended mutual funds, AQR’s Equity Market Neutral Fund, with $3.2 billion in assets and around 2,000 positions, held both long and short, gained 26.5% in 2025. Over the last 5-years it has averaged 19.6%........

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