Early Life and Education
Igor Tulchinsky was born in Minsk, Belarus SSR, in 1966. His parents were both professional musicians. In 1977, his family immigrated to the United States. He holds an MS in Computer Science from the University of Texas, completed in nine months, and an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Rise to Success
Tulchinsky began his career in 1988 at AT&T Bell Laboratories as a scientist. Prior to his career in finance, he was a video game programmer. In the early 1990s, he worked as a trading strategist for Timber Hill (now part of Interactive Brokers). He then became a statistical-arbitrage portfolio manager at Millennium Management for 12 years. He founded WorldQuant in 2007, which was spun out of Millennium Management. WorldQuant specializes in statistical arbitrage and other quantitative-driven trading techniques.
Key Business Strategies
WorldQuant manages approximately $9 billion in assets under management for Millennium Management via quantitative trading and other methods of quantitative investing. Tulchinsky believes that talent is distributed equally around the world, which influenced the founding of WorldQuant University, a tuition-free online master's degree program. In 2018, he founded WorldQuant Predictive, an artificial intelligence platform company. He also founded WorldQuant Ventures, an early-stage investment vehicle that invests in tech companies.
Philanthropy
Tulchinsky has contributed to philanthropic initiatives, including a $5 million gift to establish the WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction at Weill Cornell Medicine in 2017. In 2021, he made a $2 million gift to support strategic needs at Weill Cornell Medicine. He has invested in over 100 startups through his venture firm WorldQuant Ventures, and his charitable foundation dropped $65 million between 2013 and 2023.
