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Generative AI is the hottest venture capital investment theme in at least a decade.

Hope and hype around the technology also powered a rebound in the public equity market in 2023, following a bruising slump the previous year.

Business Insider's 2023 AI 100 list includes several experts who combine AI know-how with experience in areas of finance such as payments, trading, banking, financial data, and startup investing.

Billionaire investor and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman was all in on AI before it was all the rage among venture capitalists. He was an early investor in OpenAI, his firm Greylock has backed dozens of AI startups in the past decade, and he co-founded Inflection AI, a startup that has raised $1.5 billion from Microsoft, Nvidia, and Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates. Unsurprisingly, Hoffman is "beating the positive drum very loudly" on AI, he told The New York Times earlier this year.

Guo made a name for herself backing buzzy startups, including several up-and-coming AI companies. So when she launched her own $100 million venture capital firm Conviction in 2022, there was no question about the fund's focus. At Conviction, she's put early checks into AI startups including Harvey, an AI company for law firms, and business analytics AI company Seek AI. She also co-hosts a popular AI podcast with entrepreneur and investor Elad Gil titled "No Priors," which features interviews with prominent AI and machine learning founders and experts.

The press has dubbed Casado as Andreessen Horowitz's "AI Crusader," and the investor has been on a mission to show Silicon Valley and Washington, DC, the benefits of AI. Casado was an early advocate for the potential opportunity of generative AI and has helped the firm make early bets on startups like Pinecone and Coactive. Casado himself has some experience with success in startup-land; his A16Z-backed software company Nicira was bought by VMware for $1.26 billion in 2012.

Born and raised in Silicon Valley, Huang has witnessed transformational technology companies growing up in her backyard of Mountain View. Now Huang, a partner at Sequoia Capital, bets on the future companies who will be the future leaders of AI and has helped the firm land investments by funding splashy AI startups like Harvey and LangChain. Huang has especially been excited about the possibilities of generative AI, even penning a blog post on Sequoia's website with an open call for founders to pitch their AI startups to the fund.

Dr. Kambadur heads the AI Engineering group at Bloomberg, which consists of over 250 researchers and engineers. Dr. Kambadur, who was previously a researcher at IBM, and his team of academics use AI to develop research, communications, financial analytics, and trading systems for the financial data giant. Bloomberg is betting big on AI to streamline its products and operations. Kambadur recently said he is looking to grow its AI engineering team by as many as 50 engineers in London and New York City by the end of the year.

Taneja is Visa's president of technology and leads its AI efforts. Visa invests hundreds of millions of dollars into AI and data infrastructure annually to improve payment security, risk management, and the employee experience. "AI is going to be a huge part of how we grow, but it'll also be a part and parcel of everybody's work," Taneja told Insider. Visa has leveraged AI since 1993 and currently uses over 300 AI models that help with everything from securing its massive telecommunications network to fraud prevention in one instance, preventing $27 billion worth in a single year, Taneja said.

Veloso leads AI research at the biggest bank in the US. Her team of researchers, engineers, and mathematicians help define JPMorgan's approach to AI from an academic and research perspective. While her team doesn't handle AI deployments at JPMorgan, they are at the forefront of exploring what is and isn't possible with AI. As the former head of Carnegie Mellon University's machine learning department, Veloso leverages her strong academic background to explore how AI can be used to fight financial crime, manage the bank's massive data estate, and comply with regulations. Veloso is also a member of a new unit dedicated to data, analytics, and AI strategy at JPMorgan.

As co-chief investment officer of one of the largest global hedge funds, Jensen established a team of 17 to reinvent Bridgewater with AI and machine learning. Bridgewater even has a fund run with machine-learning techniques. Jensen believes machines can already replicate and outpace human reasoning."You have an 80th-percentile investment associate technologically. You have millions of them at once. And if you have the ability to control their hallucinations and their errors by having a rigorous statistical backdrop, you could do a tremendous amount at a rapid rate," Jensen told Bloomberg. He's long invested in AI, participating in OpenAI's first fundraise, and he wrote the first check for generative AI startup Anthropic.

As Goldman Sachs' chief information officer, Argenti defines the bank's AI strategy and leads a 12,000-employee engineering organization. His AI-focused team applies applications that span improving client services, accelerating app deployment, and reducing manual efforts and costs involved in operational tasks. His first AI applications focused on helping software developers cut down on repetitive tasks like testing and making it easier to share, document, and summarize code within Goldman. He also launched an AI application to classify and categorize the millions of documents the bank receives and is experimenting with large language models to extract data from these documents for employees to take action more quickly and easily.

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The top 9 AI people in finance - Business Insider