Wall Street and AI startups are fighting over entry-level quants

At a rooftop bar on Manhattan's Lower East Side, roughly 150 quant researchers met with employees at the artificial-intelligence startup Anthropic who implored them to consider a life away from Wall Street.

- Brunella Tipismana Urbano & Anika Arora Seth

Over plates of potstickers and popcorn chicken, they rubbed shoulders at the June mixer with former hedge fund quants-turned-Silicon Valley evangelists who encouraged them to apply for jobs at Anthropic, according to the company. This month, the San Francisco-based firm is going global with another quant "social hour" in London.

The recruiting campaign mirrors similar efforts by rivals OpenAI and Perplexity AI. And a number of leading figures in the AI industry already come with quant backgrounds, including OpenAI Chief Research Officer Mark Chen and Perplexity co-founder Johnny Ho. But quants lured by dreams of building AI models and tools instead of profit-seeking algorithms for traders—often for lofty pay and benefits comparable to the world of finance—also face the risk of disappointment.