Early Life and Education
Alexander Gerko was born on December 3, 1979, in Moscow, Russia, into a Russian Jewish family. From an early age, Gerko displayed an exceptional aptitude for mathematics, competing in city-wide competitions by the age of 12. He pursued higher education at Moscow State University, earning a Bachelor's, a Master of Science, and a Ph.D. in Mathematics. He also holds a Master of Economics from the New Economic School.
Rise to Success
Gerko's career began in 2004 at Deutsche Bank in London, where he traded equities before transitioning to foreign exchange (FX) trading. In 2009, he joined GSA Capital, a UK-based hedge fund, as the head of FX trading until 2015. In January 2015, Gerko founded XTX Markets in London, focusing on algorithmic trading across financial markets. Under his leadership as Co-CEO, XTX Markets has achieved significant milestones, including becoming the largest emerging market FX provider in 2022 and posting record profits in 2024.
Key Business Strategies
XTX Markets utilizes state-of-the-art machine learning to generate price forecasts for over 50,000 financial instruments. The firm trades over $250 billion a day across 35 countries. Gerko's strategy involves heavy investment in advanced computing infrastructure, including over 25,000 GPUs, to support its technological edge.
Philanthropy
Gerko is known for his extensive philanthropy, primarily in mathematics education. He founded the Axiom Maths charity and has donated close to $400 million since 2017 to support math education and research. This includes contributions to support early-career researchers at the University of Oxford.
