A hedge fund founded by Instacart co-founder Apoorva Mehta is using artificial intelligence agents to run much of its investment process, in one of the more aggressive attempts yet to replace traditional portfolio management with AI systems, according to a report by Bloomberg.
The firm, Abundance, is based in Palo Alto and was launched last year with a small team of quantitative researchers, engineers and AI specialists building and maintaining its models. According to Mehta, thousands of automated agents are deployed to scan information sources, generate trade ideas, conduct research, select positions, determine portfolio sizing and execute trades.
While many hedge funds already use AI tools to assist human traders, Abundance’s longer-term goal is to shift toward a model where AI systems independently manage investment decisions across the portfolio.
Mehta said some of the firm’s current strategies are already fully AI-driven, while others still involve human oversight during development and refinement. Over time, he expects automation to expand further into capital allocation decisions.
He argued that AI can process far more information and evaluate more opportunities than human investors, suggesting that decision-making is often constrained by individual cognitive limits.
The approach places Abundance among a growing number of hedge funds experimenting with machine learning and generative AI, though fully autonomous investment management remains relatively uncommon in the industry.
Mehta said the firm has reported performance that has outpaced several market benchmarks, though he did not disclose which indices were used for comparison.
