A Letter from the CEO
Investors, Policymakers, Data Rights Advocates, and Entrepreneurs;
Nearly ten years ago, I discovered a research lab dedicated to helping people use their data to make complex decisions. As an entrepreneur with energy to give, I took up their cause alongside them and shortly after, Delphia was born. We called the company “Delphia” after the Oracle of Delphi, a prophet whom the Ancient Greeks consulted before making big decisions.
We dedicated the company to doing groundbreaking prediction work for the betterment of society. While Shoshana Zuboff was alerting the world to Surveillance Capitalism (mandatory reading at Delphia), we set out to build an investment company that would distribute profit more equitably amongst stakeholders — including those who volunteered their data towards improving its algorithms. We believed (and still do) that as more investing becomes algorithmically-driven, data needs to be properly compensated.
The thesis was that the next Citadel should treat data contributors like first-class citizens instead of buying consumer data without peoples’ knowledge or consent, as happens today. We even funded an independent third party to ensure the way we valued consumers’ data was deemed “fair trade” and that if not, they could withdraw, so that I wasn’t a single point of failure.
We went on to incubate a world class investment team (whose work is being recognized by institutions globally), software for building systematic investment strategies, and open sourcing our backtesting framework. While we originally hoped to translate our research into something suitable for the average investor, we’ve since decided that educating people about quant, alpha, and ML/AI inside of a press release or TikTok ad is too tall of an order.
As Delphia departs the asset management arena, we’d like to leave the industry with some thoughts about AI, data, inequality, and policy. Terms like “AI washing,” while powerful soundbites, don’t offer much insight into how AI should serve investors. In fact, adjudicating the application of AI is such a difficult exercise that we thought it best to address those writing national policy and not simply those participating in the stock market.
We cannot regulate in a vacuum where data, AI, and capital formation are concerned. American dynamism requires a comprehensive approach to Sovereign AI if it is to achieve AI supremacy on a global scale. Delphia belongs to a chorus of voices that believe “winning” will be determined by the relationship we choose to have to our data.
Andrew Peek,
CEO, Delphia
