Q1 2026 Hedge Fund Roundup

Richard Toad

22 Mar 2026 — 4 min read

Launches, Shutdowns, and Pivots

In this issue, we discuss the reversal of a major hedge fund industry trend, news around a few Tiger Grand-cub hedge funds and a few high-profile billion AUM+ hedge fund launches, and more.

If you missed the last two editions: 2025 Q4 | 2025 Q3

This article is brought to you by Endex.ai

OpenAI Races to Deploy AI Agents on Wall St. Where Does Finance AI Stand Today?

GPT-5.2 scored 68.4% on junior investment banking tasks - up from 59% just one model generation ago - building DCFs, comps, and sensitivity analysis.

Major Wall Street firms are partnering with OpenAI's Endex to spearhead AI-driven modeling.

Banks, hedge funds, PE firms, & more, are raci ng to adopt Ended's AI agents that work the way they do — inside Excel, built for finance, and executing the daily workflows of their firm.

Request Access

Funds are saying no to pod $

In the last issue, we discussed the trend of start-up hedge funds launching exclusively with pod shop money.

Bloomberg's Nishant Kumar shared this trend is already reversing. Just like there will always be more countries in the world, I always believe there will also always be more hedge funds because everyone wants to run their own shop exactly their way. Read this article to learn more.

Launches / Shutdowns

Want my insider takes?

8,000+ readers get my weekly insights on public equity research.

Serious about a career in public equity?

We unearth buy-side and sell-side research job leads that others don't see.

Never miss an equity research job again, use Equity Research Job Board

Read my other published articles:

📇 Connect with me: LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

If you want to advertise in my newsletter, contact me

Fund Database Master Table

All 1,000+ hedge funds and long-onlys in one place, sortable and searchable Updated as of 3/17/2026 The search works for your keyword in all fields: from name of the fund, all the way to the text inside the details column. Example use cases: * If you want to

2025 sell-side equity research comp survey findings

Note: * All figures are averages using pivot table * There weren’t enough international data points to even have analysis, so I excluded them * excluded a few outliers (because might be prank submissions) and macro (because it can skew the fundamental research info) * Firms considered “BB” in my grouping (I have

Fund database methodology

Updated: 3/14/2026 Subject to change because I cannot make up my damn mind. Hedge funds AUM: because hedge funds only report regulatory AUM, which includes leverage, it's not disclosed in our fund database. Style I classify funds into value, growth, event-driven, activist, healthcare (mainly biotech/biopharma)

2026 Q1 Fund Database Refresh Findings

Methodology: additions and shutdowns are based on whether a fund appears as a Form ADV Part 2 filer (>$100M of regulatory AUM), compared to March 2025's data. 2026.3.8 New York City * -6 shutdowns (all hedge funds): 2 activist, 1 growth, 1 value, 1 healthcare, 1