Instacart co-founder Apoorva Mehta launches Abundance, a hedge fund that deploys thousands of automated AI agents to manage investment decisions

Abundance, based in Palo Alto, California, was started last year by Mehta. The firm has raised $100m in seed equity financing and currently has a team of about ten people, mainly trading its own capital with plans to accept external money later.

The fund deploys thousands of automated agents that trawl information sources, propose trade ideas, carry out research, choose positions, set position sizes and place trades. Some of the firm's stock-selection strategies are already fully automated, while other strategies being developed will still include some human input for the time being.

Abundance's longer-term aim is to move towards AI systems managing investment decisions across the portfolio on their own. The fund takes long and short equity positions and plans to expand into other asset classes.