By Franey
Steve Cohen, the hedge fund titan who owns the New York Mets, wants to raise $1 billion to buy stocks in artificial intelligence firms, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
Sources told the financial newswire his Point72 Asset Management firm will create a new fund to bet on or against AI hardware and semiconductor companies.
The 68-year-old investing icon has previously said that he expects AI technology to be “transformational” to the way firms do business.
“There’s going to be big winners and big losers,” Cohen told CNBC in April.
“When you have a technological change like this, it sort of reminds me of the ’90s where the best new companies came out of that period,” he said.
A boom in investor appetite for AI stocks has been credited with driving markets over the past year.
Point72, headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, manages $33.9 billion in assets.
The firm’s San Francisco-based portfolio manager Eric Sanchez will run Cohen’s new AI-focused fund and will launch either late this year or early 2025, Bloomberg reported.
Aside from outside investment, Point72 employees and Cohen himself, who has an estimated net worth of $13.9 billion, are set to stump up capital for the new vehicle.
The New York native will be hoping that the venture will be more successful than his past four years at the helm of the Mets, which now languish fourth in the National League East.
Cohen bought the Mets in 2020 for $2.4 billion, the highest sale price ever for an MLB team, and took over as their chief executive and chairman.
He admitted last year that he was losing money on the project as he tried to spend his way towards winning the Mets’ third-ever World Series.
Their dismal showing last season saw them finish fourth in the NL East, missing out on the playoffs and the final wild card berth.
2023 cost an eye-watering $420 million: the team’s finalized payroll figures hit a record $319.5 million, while they were asked to stump up $100.8 million in luxury taxes.
