A market shift few anticipated
Vertus, an AI company based on the Isle of Man, says it generated returns of more than 51 percent in 2025 while trading over 500 million dollars a day.Not a simulation.
Not a backtest.A full calendar year of live market activity involving real capital.
According to the company, these results have been independently verified by Alpha Performance Verification Services, a certified public accounting firm.According to the company, its performance exceeded that of a number of established hedge funds during a year that proved difficult for many quantitative and AI-driven strategies.In April 2025, global markets were hit by a sharp wave of volatility following significant changes in US trade policy.Many systems built primarily on historical pattern recognition struggled to adapt to rapidly changing conditions.Vertus says its system adapted differently.The company describes its technology as a cognitive reasoning architecture designed to revise its assumptions as conditions change rather than relying solely on historical pattern recognition.
According to Vertus, 11 months during 2025 were positive, with one period of drawdown recovered within 10 days.So who built this thing?Julius Franck is a German quantitative researcher who graduated valedictorian from Nürtingen-Geislingen University before continuing his studies in South Korea, where he completed a Master of Science in International Finance at Sogang University.Michal Prywata is a Polish-Canadian engineer and entrepreneur whose previous work has included biomedical engineering, robotics, and aerospace ventures.Before Vertus, he co-founded Quantum Cognition alongside Alex Foster, where the pair began exploring machine reasoning systems designed for financial environments.Foster, a British entrepreneur, says he made his first trade at fourteen and funded much of his education and earlier business ventures through trading profits.
He later became involved in the development of algorithmic trading systems and AI-focuse...