Mathematician Alex Gerko's AI-driven XTX lifts him to No. 8 on UK rich list
Alex Gerko, a 46-year-old mathematician, ranks eighth on the Sunday Times 2026 UK rich list with £16.006bn (about RMB 141.7bn), up £7.261bn from 2025, according to reports citing the list. He owns roughly 75% of XTX Markets, the quantitative market maker he founded in 2015, which uses machine learning to forecast prices and quote liquidity directly to clients; XTX's site says its research cluster has more than 25,000 GPUs, covers over 53,000 instruments across 35 countries, and handles about $250bn in daily trading volume. Its three main UK entities reported combined after-tax profit of about £1.71bn in 2025, but public materials do not break out AI's separate profit contribution, and Gerko's gains largely reflect equity valuation.
It shows AI's financial upside still accrues mainly to firms that build their own data, compute and risk systems and take the trading risk themselves, rather than to retail 'AI stock picking' tools.