Nik Storonsky spent the past decade shaking up banking with his financial services firm Revolut. Now the billionaire former Lehman Brothers trader is looking to pull off a similar feat in venture capital.
Storonsky has built a quantitative investment firm for early-stage companies that relies on algorithms and artificial intelligence over human input to source deals. Founded in 2022, QuantumLight has invested in almost a dozen startups in the past year after raising about $200 million for a debut fund that Storonsky anchored.
In recent weeks, the London-based firm took a stake in health care-focused startup Rad AI, the fund’s fourth allocation this year despite a downturn in the venture sector. QuantumLight is currently finalizing another deal, according to a person familiar with the matter.
While many startup investors boast about their savvy use of data, QuantumLight positions itself as an outlier.
“We look quite different compared to a traditional venture firm,” Chief Executive Officer Ilya Kondrashov, 38, said in an interview at the London offices of Revolut. “It’s pretty logical that something like what we are doing will exist.”
Storonsky, 39, joins a growing number of European tech billionaires building venture investments as they expand their wealth outside their primary assets. Checkout.com founder Guillaume Pousaz’s family office, Zinal Growth, has invested in at least two dozen startups since 2021, while an investment firm for Spotify Technology SA’s Daniel Ek put €10 million ($10.7 million) last year into a Swiss startup that works on slowing aging.
Pousaz and Ek have a combined fortune of about $10.4 billion, while Storonsky, Revolut’s co-founder and CEO, is worth roughly $4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Storonsky got his start in finance trading equity derivatives at Lehman Brothers in 2006 before moving to a similar role at Credit Suisse in early 2008, according to his LinkedIn profile. He worked at the Swiss firm for more than five years before leaving to start Revolut after growing frustrated with banking.
“I’d already reached the maximum,” he previously told Bloomberg. “It became very boring.”
Revolut disclosed its 2023 results this week, showing that revenue almost doubled to $2.2 billion. A timely release of its audited financial results could help the company win approval of a UK banking license, which has been long delayed, partly over Revolut’s accounting problems.
Storonsky, who founded Revolut in 2015, allocated about $60 million to QuantumLight’s fund. In an emailed statement, he said his venture firm’s strategy allows it to make more precise decisions at a quicker pace than humans, and he expects those methods to play a greater role in the market for startup deals.
“These systematic strategies will command a meaningful share,” he said. “Like Revolut is challenging the traditional banks, QuantumLight has ambitions to take on giants.”
