XTX Markets Founder Ranks 8th on UK Rich List as AI Trading System Drives Wealth Surge

The Sunday Times published its 2026 UK Rich List on October 11, placing 46-year-old Alex Gerko eighth with total assets of £16.006 billion, up £7.261 billion from 2025.

Gerko founded XTX Markets, a quantitative trading company that built an AI-driven trading system. The system draws on more than 400 petabytes of global financial market data and runs on a large GPU cluster. XTX employs just over 250 people, has no traditional traders and no external investors. The firm has become one of the most profitable private companies in the UK.

Born in Moscow in 1979, Gerko earned a PhD in mathematics from Moscow State University, worked at Deutsche Bank and GSA Capital, and launched XTX in 2015. He has supported mathematics research, and XTX set up the AI-MO Prize in 2024, offering $10 million for the first AI model to win a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad.