Day: July 28, 2025

• Michael Gelband’s ExodusPoint is atop the leaderboard midway through 2025, besting peers like Millennium.
• The $11 billion firm was the biggest launch in industry history, starting with more than $8 billion in 2018.
• The manager has leaned on its fixed-income expertise to drive strong returns this year.

There were sky-high expectations for the ExodusPoint Capital Management when it launched 7 years ago. It’s starting to meet them.

The $11 billion firm was the largest launch in industry history in 2018 thanks to the stellar track record of cofounder Michael Gelband, who previously led Millennium’s fixed-income division. He told former colleagues that his unit generated $7 billion in trading revenue in his eight years at Izzy Englander’s firm, and hedge fund backers rushed to invest in his new firm, which started trading with a record $8.5 billion.

But putting all of the capital to work, hiring scores of investors, setting up the necessary infrastructure, and finding the right leadership took time. The firm, which was also cofounded by former Millennium equities executive Hyung Lee, was a relative disappointment at the start, with the difficult reality of being compared to funds like the cofounders’ former employer and Ken Griffin’s Citadel from day one.

Now, a little over seven years after the manager first began trading, the New York-based firm has outperformed its peers in 2025 and over the last 12 months. The manager is up more than 9% after a 1.8% June gain. Since the start of July 2024, ExodusPoint has returned more than 18%.

A person with direct knowledge of the firm’s operations pointed to several factors as to why. This person is not permitted to speak publicly about the manager’s operations.

In a roller coaster equities market, ExodusPoint has benefited from its fixed-income lean. Roughly 75% of the firm’s risk is in fixed-income books, the person close to the firm said, which is Gelband’s specialty, though the cofounder does not manage money himself. Jon Hoffman, a former Lehman Brothers trader who worked with Gelband at the bank, is one of the firm’s best-known portfolio managers with his basis-trade strategy.

Gelband is now the sole chief investment officer after Lee stepped down in 2024 (the cofounder, who had relocated to Puerto Rico, is currently a senior advisor). The firm made several hires in 2023 who have led units that were previously under Lee’s purview, such as Adam Galeon and Michael Lapsa, who run long-short equities and systematic strategies, respectively. Peter McConnon, once the head of London macro for Balyasny, was also brought in during this time as a senior managing director of fixed income and macro.

While members of the original team such as Lee and former chief risk officer Dev Joneja have moved into advisory roles, Garrett Berg, a day-one employee who has since been promoted to president and COO, and Kunal Kumar, a former Balyasny executive who joined in 2023 and is now chief risk officer, have been a big part of the progress on both the investment and non-investment sides of the business, this person said.

The firm also adopted a cash hurdle for performance fees last year, meaning ExodusPoint only collects performance fees when it returns more than a Treasury bill. This has lowered the overall fee rate of the firm, boosting net returns.

Lastly, the firm has been strategic about how it expands and hires. While headcounts at multistrategy funds have exploded in recent years, ExodusPoint reduced its staff slightly since 2022, according to regulatory filings compiled by industry data tracker Old Well Labs.

The firm’s overall headcount stood at 688 in 2022 and is now roughly 650, the data show.

After raising $1 billion in new cash in 2023, the firm is closed to new capital, like many of its peers, and is not looking to expand into different strategies or markets like commodities or private credit, the person said.

• Astronomer went from a little-known tech firm to a global sensation this month.
• It began with a viral clip of its then CEO and head of human resources embracing at a Coldplay show.
• The company seized the moment, creating an ad featuring Gwyneth Paltrow that highlighted its work.

Astronomer, a once little-known tech company, looked to the stars to turn a viral disaster into a marketing opportunity.

The company was introduced to the world after a “kiss cam” at a Coldplay show caught its now-former CEO, Andy Byron, embracing its now-former head of human resources, Kristin Cabot, before the pair ducked for cover.

The video ricocheted around the world, and the executives resigned days later.

Astronomer then moved to shift the narrative, and it did so by working with two A-list Hollywood stars: Gwyneth Paltrow and Ryan Reynolds.

Reynolds started the viral ad agency Maximum Effort in 2018. It has promoted the “Deadpool” movies, in which Reynolds also starred, and has made humorous ads for Match.com, Mint Mobile, the NAACP, and others. Reynolds is the chief creative officer.

It’s not clear who reached out to whom first. Maximum Effort and Astronomer did not immediately respond to messages from Business Insider. The ad agency, however, confirmed on LinkedIn on Sunday that it was behind Astronomer’s new ad, which featured Paltrow, poked fun at the controversy without ever mentioning it, and highlighted the company’s work.

Public relations experts told BI after the Coldplay incident that Astronomer could probably capitalize on what was otherwise a bad situation. The company’s collaboration with Maximum Effort appears to have done just that.

The commercial has been well-received, and some PR professionals told BI the company has fully succeeded in leveraging its accidental fame.

“Creating a video clever enough, yet with just enough controversy, to spread online and capture mainstream media attention is generating millions of dollars of free, positive publicity for Astronomer,” Kristi Piehl, founder and CEO of Media Minefield, told BI.

She said Paltrow’s script was “on message” and, importantly, focused on what Astronomer does, not what its former executives did.

“The video shifts the narrative, allowing Astronomer to have the last word,” Piehl said.

In the video, Paltrow is presented as a “temporary spokesperson” for the firm. She says the company has “gotten a lot of questions over the last few days” and wanted her to answer the “most common ones.”

But rather than share any new details about the now-infamous “kiss cam” moment, Paltrow promoted Astronomer’s products.

“If you want to talk crisis communications, this is a 2025 era playbook on how to do this the right way from a corporate standpoint,” Sam Amsterdam, founder and managing partner at Amsterdam Group Public Relations, told BI.

“They chose not to make this a crisis. This was a deliberate attempt at being pragmatic, at brand building, at brand defining,” he said.

Ryan McCormick, cofounder of Goldman McCormick PR, said the public is used to seeing corporate responses to crises that “miss their mark,” but that wasn’t the case this time.

“Astronomer nailed it here, and I think public interest in them will only increase for the foreseeable future,” he said.

Having made it through to the other side of a viral controversy, the company appears ready to move on. In a LinkedIn post on Sunday, Astronomer’s cofounder and new CEO, Pete DeJoy, thanked Maximum Effort for its “remarkable work.”

“As Gwyneth Paltrow said, now it’s time for us to return to what we do best: delivering game-changing results for our customers. We look forward to what this next chapter holds for Astronomer.”