Hedge fund Citadel is feeling the brutal reality of AI replacing high-IQ jobs from the inside. Founder and CEO Ken Griffin confirmed at the 2026 Stanford Leadership Forum that advanced financial research—work that used to take finance masters and PhDs weeks or even months—is now being churned out by the firm's internal AI agents in hours or days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csjy_A3Kj9s
Griffin admitted that watching his core R&D team get rapidly automated left him depressed one Friday evening on his way out of the office. He borrowed a chilling analogy from historian Niall Ferguson to frame the impact: "In the world of AI, humans are the horses that were replaced by cars."
The destruction comes with the dismantling of old market structures. Griffin made clear that the competitive moats large companies have long relied on are being quickly leveled by various AI tools. That has turned today's market into a dreamland for entrepreneurs, where the barrier for a small team to take on industry giants has never been lower.