How one hedge-fund manager built his firm to be powered entirely by AI agents

Hedge-fund manager Brian Kelly has his staff working 24/7, yet his payroll costs are a fraction of what they once were.

That's because Kelly — who previously ran a cryptocurrency hedge fund — created his new trading firm, Bracket22, to be powered entirely by agentic artificial intelligence.

"I used to have about seven or eight employees all around the world. A lot of them were based in New York," Kelly told CNBC. "Between their salaries and compute and healthcare and everything like that, my payroll was well into the millions of dollars per year."

Factoring in things such as office space and bonuses, Kelly estimated his total labor-related costs before he began using AI were roughly $5 million a year.

"Now, when I'm using AI, I run somewhere around [$30,000] to $40,000 a year, total. And that's with every AI agent, that's with all my compute, that's with everything I need to completely replicate a hedge fund ... with AI," he said.

Bracket22 is a stark example of a growing reality on Wall Street as firms test the benefits and limits of AI in finance.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in February the tech was already reshaping his workforce and that his bank had "huge redeployment" plans for its employees. The company plans to launch AI agents later this year that it has said can work autonomously for hours at a time.

There has been some hesitation, though. A Goldman Sachs partner, for example, recently warned of the dangers in letting AI erode bankers' reasoning skills.