(Bloomberg) - Ken Griffin said his firms are in the process of negotiating an enterprise-wide license to use OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool.
“This branch of technology has real impact on our business,” Griffin, the billionaire founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities, said in an interview Tuesday in Palm Beach, Florida. “Everything from helping our developers write better code to translating software between languages to analyze various types of information that we analyze in the ordinary course of our business.”
ChatGPT has become a global phenomenon since its November launch, providing detailed answers to almost any kind of question. Griffin’s hedge fund and electronic market maker have long been on the forefront of automation and other technological advances.
“It is the fastest-growing consumer application in the history of the internet,” Griffin, 54, said of ChatGPT. “I’m really excited to see how this changes the world.”
Griffin, who has a net worth of more than $36 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, founded the hedge fund Citadel in 1990. He later established Citadel Securities, the trading firm that serves asset managers, banks, broker-dealers, hedge funds, government agencies and public pension programs.
Questions remain on how ChatGPT would be used in either business. “It will take an enormous amount of work that’s done today by people, and do it in a distinctly different, highly automated, efficient way,” Griffin said.
Both of Griffin’s firms posted big gains last year, when Citadel Securities raked in record revenue of $7.5 billion and raised its profile as one of the largest trading units in the US. The flagship hedge fund, operated separately, jumped 38% on strong performance in areas including equities and commodities.
Wall Street firms have clamped down on ChatGPT. Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. are among lenders that have imposed limits, with Bank of America telling employees that ChatGPT and OpenAI are prohibited from business use, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
ChatGPT potentially could create stock portfolios, or hasten the production of analyst presentations. There’s even an exchange-traded fund planned around the concept.
(Updates with Citadel description, quote, Wall Street crackdown starting in fifth paragraph.)
By Katherine Doherty and Felipe Marques
