Revolut CEO and co-founder Nik Storonsky. Image: Revolut
QuantumLight is billionaire and Revolut chief Storonsky’s latest venture, which aims to remove human bias from the VC funding process.
Nik Storonsky, the founder of one of Europe’s most successful start-ups, is launching his own venture fund, QuantumLight.
QuantumLight will use new technologies to identify promising start-ups to invest in. Pitched as “the first truly systematic venture capital and growth equity firm”, the website claims the new VC is built like a technology company and led by “tech unicorn founders, quant traders, AI scientists and engineers” who are yet to be named.
News of Storonsky’s intention to start QuantumLight was first revealed by Forbes earlier this week. Forbes reported that Storonsky wants to use his experience leading Revolut, and as a quant trader before that, to disrupt the legacy venture capital space which he finds “frustrating”.
“In the bad times no one wants to invest, in the good times they all want to invest – so the lessons were that VCs are pretty unstable and there is some element of crowd mentality,” said Storonsky, noting that he prefers a model without human judgement.
Storonsky, who has an estimated wealth of $7.1bn, was born in Russia to a Ukrainian father and is now a British citizen. Before Revolut, he worked as an equity derivatives trader at Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers.
He co-founded Revolut in 2015 with Ukrainian-born Vladyslav Yatsenko. The fintech start-up disrupted banking in Europe with its digital banking services.
Within three years, Revolut raised $250m in a funding round that increased its valuation five-fold and gave it unicorn status. Last July, Revolut was valued at $33bn – another dramatic jump from the company’s previous valuation at $5.5bn.
With QuantumLight, Storonsky is now looking for the next big disrupter. While not much has been revealed about the team behind it, Storonsky has plans to hire a CEO to head the fund.
The careers section on the QuantumLight website is hiring for roles ranging from data engineers to investment associates and paralegals. All the jobs are based in the UK, mostly London.
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