David E. Shaw, The Quant Who Returned To Building Computers

David E. Shaw is usually introduced as the billionaire who built one of the most secretive quantitative hedge funds on Wall Street. That description is accurate and it buries the more interesting fact, which is that he left the firm bearing his name to go back to building computers. The through line across four decades is unusually consistent. Shaw has spent his career arguing that if you care enough about one specific calculation, you should stop buying general-purpose computers and design silicon shaped around that calculation instead. He made that argument as a young academic in the 1980s, he applied it to securities markets in between, and he has spent the years since building machines that simulate molecules faster than anything else on Earth. Known for Founding D. E. Shaw & Co in 1988, and designing the Anton special-purpose supercomputers Current role Chief scientist, D. E. Shaw Research; senior research fellow and adjunct professor, Columbia The hedge fund was the detour, not the destination. Shaw was building custom parallel hardware at Columbia before Wall Street and returned to building custom parallel hardware afterwards. The finance years funded the machine. Anton is the argument for special-purpose silicon, made in hardware. By…