Two Sigma Investments was founded in 2001 by
John Overdeck,
David Siegel and Mark Pickard. Siegel is a computer science Ph.D. from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology who worked for
Tudor Investments, and Overdeck is an
International Mathematical Olympiad Silver Medalist who subsequently studied mathematics at
Stanford University and worked for
Jeff Bezos in
Amazon.com's early days. The two met at
D. E. Shaw & Co., where Siegel held the position of Chief Information Officer and Overdeck the position of managing director. They left to co-found Two Sigma in 2001 with
seed funding from
Paul Tudor Jones. Pickard served as the President of the firm from its inception until his retirement in 2006. In October 2013, Two Sigma Private Investments announced that it was joining with Stephen Hannahs to form Wings Capital Partners, a commercial aviation private equity, investment, advisory and financing company. In July 2014, it was announced that Simon Yates,
Citigroup's global head of equity derivative sales and trading, left the bank to join Two Sigma. In February 2014,
Forbes reported that former Two Sigma employee Kang Gao, aged 29, was prosecuted by the
District Attorney of New York County and is accused of using a remote-access device to view Two Sigma's proprietary trading models and emailing this information to his personal email account, lifting quantitative trading strategies, trading models, a marketing presentation, and a scientific white paper. The case, New York. v. Kang Gao, led to Gao receiving 8 months in jail as of October 2014. In 2016, Two Sigma Investments ranked 11th on
Penta's Top 100 Hedge Funds. As of early 2017, Two Sigma had used
crowdsourcing options to find trading signals. By March 2017, the fund was running a competition on
Kaggle to code a trading algorithm. The fund managed around $8 billion in November 2011, $23 billion in October 2014, and $32 billion by the end of 2015. , the fund had assets reaching more than $50 billion. In May 2019, the fund had assets reaching $60 billion. This number slightly dropped to $58 billion in October 2020, after Two Sigma saw losses in its risk premia, absolute return, and macro funds. In January 2026, Two Sigma sold Venn, its quantitative investment analytics tool, to
Insight Partners for an undisclosed amount.
Overdeck and Siegel In March 2023, the firm took the rare step of discussing personnel discord in the corporate suite in a filing to investors. It seems that relations between co-founders John Overdeck and David Siegel collapsed over the course of the previous years, and they were no longer on speaking terms; yet both continued to own a large segment of the company with no sign of being willing to sell their stake. The relationship was so contentious that the firm stopped holding all-hands meetings, due to the pair's unwillingness to coordinate and address employees or investors together. Additionally, Overdeck was in the process of a messy and public divorce, with his wife accusing him of
hiding the family's assets in a court filing. In August 2024, Overdeck and Siegel stepped down as co-chief executives and were replaced by Carter Lyons and Scott Hoffman. In September 2025, the
Department of Justice indicted a former Two Sigma quantitative researcher, Jian Wu, on fraud charges for allegedly manipulating the firm's algorithmic trading models, resulting in $165 million in damage to clients. Two Sigma terminated Wu in 2024 and repaid the client losses. The SEC also filed a civil suit against Wu for related allegations. == Technology ==