Alfred Winslow Jones is credited with launching the first hedge fund in 1949, combining long positions with short sales to “hedge” against market risk.
More than seventy years on, the industry has become a substantial part of global markets, with thousands of funds managing trillions in assets.
Hedge funds are known for active trading, sophisticated strategies, and higher risk-return profiles. Though they represent a small share of global financial assets, they are influential participants given their scale, technological sophistication, and willingness to take positions most investors will not.
Below is a look at the largest hedge funds in the world by assets under management, alongside an explanation of why these figures are harder to compare than they appear.
Ten largest hedge funds by AUM
| Hedge fund | AUM | Date reported | Source |
| Arrowstreet Capital | $351B | June 2026 | SEC filing |
| AQR Capital Management | $311B | June 2026 | SEC filing |
| Man Group | $254B | June 2026 | Man Group |
| D.E. Shaw | $213B | June 2026 | SEC filing |
| Artisan Partners | $183B | July 2026 | SEC filing |
| Bridgewater Associates | $150B | June 2026 | SEC filing |
| Citadel | [verificar] | 2026 | SEC filing |
| Millennium Management | $92B | June 2026 | SEC filing |
| Balyasny Asset Management | $38B | 2026 | SEC filing |
| Mariner Investment Group | $10.2B | August 2026 | SEC filing |
Reporting dates vary by firm and figures change continuously. Note that some managers publish net assets under management while others report regulatory AUM, which includes gross positions and leverage – see the section below on why these differ so substantially.
Two observations from this ranking.
The order shifts depending on which measure you use. Firms reporting gross regulatory figures appear far larger than those publishing net assets, even where the underlying businesses are comparable in size. Arrowstreet and AQR lead on the regulatory measure; on net assets managed, the ordering would look quite different.
US firms dominate. Man Group, headquartered in London, is the largest non-US manager on the list and the only publicly listed one – which means it is also the only firm here whose accounts are subject to full public disclosure.
The largest hedge funds in detail
Arrowstreet Capital
- AUM: $351 billion
- Reporting date: June 2026
- Strategies: quantitative global equity, long-only, alpha extension, long/short
Founded in 1999 in Boston by Bruce Clarke, John Y. Campbell, and Peter Rathjens, Arrowstreet Capital specialises in systematic, quantitative global equity strategies.
The firm is notably low-profile relative to its scale, running models built on academic research into cross-sectional return prediction. Campbell, one of the founders, is a Harvard economist whose work on asset pricing underpins much of the approach.
AQR Capital Management
- AUM: $311 billion
- Reporting date: June 2026
- Strategies: systematic multi-asset, absolute return, total return
Founded in 1998 by Cliff Asness, David Kabiller, John Liew, and Robert Krail, AQR is among the most prominent quantitative managers globally, offering over 40 strategies spanning absolute and total return approaches.
AQR is closely associated with factor investing – the systematic pursuit of return premia from value, momentum, quality, and low volatility. Asness completed his doctorate under Eugene Fama, and the firm has published extensively in academic finance, which is unusual in an industry built on secrecy.
Man Group
- AUM: $254 billion
- Reporting date: June 2026
- Strategies: systematic and discretionary long-only, alternatives, private markets
Headquartered in London, Man Group plc is the world’s largest publicly traded hedge fund manager, listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Its history is remarkable: founded in 1783 as a sugar brokerage supplying the Royal Navy, it operated as a commodities business for nearly two centuries before transitioning fully to investment management. Its AHL division is among the longest-running systematic trend-following programmes anywhere.
Public listing gives Man Group a transparency advantage over every other firm on this list – audited accounts, quarterly disclosure, and published performance data.
D.E. Shaw
- AUM: $213 billion
- Reporting date: June 2026
- Strategies: multi-strategy, quantitative
Founded in 1988 by David E. Shaw, a former Columbia computer science professor, the firm pioneered applying computational methods to identifying market inefficiencies – an approach now standard but genuinely novel at the time.
D.E. Shaw has been notably influential beyond finance: Jeff Bezos worked there before founding Amazon, and the firm’s alumni have started numerous other quantitative managers.
Artisan Partners
- AUM: $183 billion
- Reporting date: July 2026
- Strategies: public and private equity, credit, emerging markets
Founded in 1994 by Andrew and Carlene Ziegler, Artisan Partners is headquartered in Milwaukee with offices in Dublin, Hong Kong, London, Singapore, and Sydney. It is listed on the NYSE (ticker: APAM).
Artisan operates an autonomous investment team model, where each team runs its strategy independently rather than following a central house view. That structure is closer to a traditional active manager than a hedge fund in the conventional sense, and its inclusion here reflects the fluidity of the category.
Bridgewater Associates
- AUM: $150 billion
- Reporting date: June 2026
- Strategies: global macro, risk parity
Founded by Ray Dalio in 1975 from his New York apartment, Bridgewater is headquartered in Westport, Connecticut and remains among the best-known hedge funds globally.
It pioneered the risk parity approach, allocating by risk contribution rather than capital weight, and is known for a distinctive internal culture built around what Dalio termed radical transparency.
Note that Bridgewater’s assets have contracted meaningfully in recent years as the firm reduced the size of its flagship Pure Alpha fund – a reminder that scale in this industry is not permanent.
Citadel
- AUM: [verificar valor atual]
- Reporting date: 2026
- Strategies: equities, fixed income, commodities, credit, quantitative
Founded by Ken Griffin in 1990, Citadel is among the most successful hedge funds by cumulative returns, operating five core strategies from Miami, having relocated from Chicago in 2022.
Worth distinguishing Citadel, the hedge fund, from Citadel Securities, a separate market-making business under common ownership that handles a substantial share of US retail equity order flow. The two are frequently conflated but operate independently.
Millennium Management
- AUM: $92 billion
- Reporting date: June 2026
- Strategies: multi-strategy across equities, fixed income, commodities, currencies
Founded in 1989 by Israel Englander, Millennium is headquartered in New York and runs a global multi-strategy approach across asset classes.
Its defining characteristic is the pod structure: hundreds of semi-autonomous trading teams operating under strict, centrally enforced risk limits. Teams breaching drawdown thresholds have capital reduced or withdrawn, which produces high turnover among portfolio managers but tightly controlled firm-level risk.
That model has been widely imitated – Balyasny and Citadel operate variants of it – and is largely why multi-strategy funds have attracted so much capital over the past decade.
Balyasny Asset Management
- AUM: $38 billion
- Reporting date: 2026
- Strategies: equities long/short, fixed income and macro, commodities, multi-asset arbitrage, systematic
Founded in 2001 by Dmitry Balyasny, Scott Schroeder, and Taylor O’Malley, BAM is a diversified global multi-strategy firm headquartered in Chicago, employing more than 2,700 people across 24 offices in the US, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
Its investment teams span five strategies, with a stated aim of delivering absolute, uncorrelated returns across market environments.
Mariner Investment Group
- AUM: $10.2 billion
- Reporting date: August 2026
- Strategies: multi-strategy, relative value, securitised credit
Founded in 1992, Mariner Investment Group specialises in niche strategies across public and private markets, operating through multiple strategy teams across several offices.
Mariner illustrates the AUM measurement problem clearly: its regulatory filings have historically shown figures more than ten times its net assets, reflecting the gross leverage inherent in relative value and securitised credit strategies.
What are hedge funds?
Hedge funds pool capital from accredited individuals and institutions, investing across asset classes using sophisticated portfolio construction and risk management. They commonly employ leverage and derivatives to amplify returns or manage exposure.
The defining aim is absolute rather than relative return – making money regardless of market direction, rather than beating a benchmark. That is where “hedge” originates: positions structured to protect against declines.
Clients are typically high-net-worth individuals, pension funds, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds, drawn by return potential and, increasingly, by low correlation to traditional portfolios.
Three characteristics worth understanding:
- Fee structure: traditionally “two and twenty” – a 2% management fee plus 20% of profits – though larger multi-strategy funds increasingly pass through operating costs on top. Fees have compressed at the margins but remain high relative to other managers;
- Limited liquidity: capital is typically locked for defined periods, with redemptions permitted only at intervals and sometimes subject to gates limiting withdrawals;
- Performance dispersion: the gap between the best and worst hedge funds is enormous, far wider than among conventional funds. Aggregate industry returns have frequently lagged simple index strategies, which makes manager selection the dominant factor in outcomes.
What are assets under management?
Assets under management (AUM) is the total market value of investments a firm oversees on behalf of clients, comprising capital raised from investors plus returns generated. It is the standard proxy for a firm’s size and, indirectly, its perceived success.
AUM moves daily with investment performance – capital appreciation, dividends, interest, and losses – and with investor activity as capital is subscribed or redeemed.
It matters commercially because management fees are charged as a percentage of AUM, so growing assets directly grows revenue. That creates an incentive worth being aware of: a firm can be highly profitable while delivering mediocre returns, provided it keeps raising capital.
AUM says nothing about performance. Some of the strongest-performing funds deliberately cap their size, since strategies that work at $1 billion often do not at $50 billion – a phenomenon known as capacity constraint. Renaissance Technologies’ Medallion fund, widely regarded as the most successful ever, has been closed to outside capital for decades and would not appear in any ranking of this kind.
Why the numbers differ: RAUM versus AUM
Comparing hedge funds by size is harder than it looks, because the two figures in circulation measure fundamentally different things.
Regulatory assets under management (RAUM) is what firms report to the SEC on Form ADV. The calculation is prescribed and includes gross long and short positions, uncalled committed capital, and non-fee-generating assets. Critically, it counts leveraged exposure at full notional value.
AUM, as firms typically publish it, generally means net assets on which fees are earned – closer to what investors have actually entrusted to the manager.
The gap can be enormous. A firm might report $500 billion in RAUM while managing $70 billion in client capital, with the difference explained entirely by leverage and gross position accounting. That is not misreporting; it reflects two measures answering different questions.
Which matters more depends on what you are asking:
- RAUM indicates market footprint – how much exposure a firm has, and therefore how much its trading can move prices;
- AUM indicates commercial scale – how much capital investors have committed, and roughly what the firm earns in fees.
Strategies employing heavy leverage, particularly relative value and fixed income arbitrage, show the widest divergence. Long-only equity managers show almost none.
The practical consequence: rankings of hedge funds by size should be read with the measurement basis in mind, since a list ordered by RAUM looks materially different from one ordered by net assets.
To sum up
From Alfred Winslow Jones’s original fund in 1949 to the multi-hundred-billion firms operating today, hedge funds have become a significant component of global markets.
The funds above illustrate the range of approaches within the category – systematic quantitative equity at Arrowstreet and AQR, factor-based multi-asset at AQR, global macro at Bridgewater, and pod-based multi-strategy at Millennium and Balyasny. These are not variations on a theme; they are genuinely different businesses grouped under one label.
Three points worth carrying away:
- Size is not performance. The largest funds are not the best performing, and several of the strongest performers deliberately restrict their size because their strategies do not scale;
- The measurement basis matters. RAUM and net AUM can differ by a factor of five or more, so any ranking depends heavily on which is used;
- Access is limited. These funds are generally closed to individual investors, with minimums running into millions and many closed to new capital entirely. For most people, the relevance is understanding how these firms shape markets rather than investing alongside them.
FAQs
What is the biggest hedge fund by AUM?
It depends on the measure. On regulatory assets under management, Arrowstreet Capital currently reports the largest figure at around $351 billion, followed by AQR Capital Management. On net assets actually managed for clients, the ordering differs considerably, since RAUM includes gross leveraged positions.
Man Group is the largest publicly listed hedge fund manager and the largest based outside the United States.
Why is AUM significant for hedge funds?
AUM reflects the total value of assets a fund manages and indicates its scale and ability to attract capital. It also drives revenue directly, since management fees are charged as a percentage of assets.
Bear in mind that AUM measures commercial success rather than investment skill – a fund can grow assets substantially while delivering unremarkable returns.
Are hedge funds only for wealthy individuals and institutions?
Largely, yes. Regulatory rules restrict hedge funds to accredited or professional investors, and minimum investments typically run into hundreds of thousands or millions. Many of the largest funds are closed to new capital entirely.
Some liquid alternative funds and UCITS structures offer broadly similar strategies to retail investors at lower minimums, though usually with reduced leverage and different return characteristics.
Why do reported AUM figures vary so much between firms?
Because firms calculate and disclose AUM differently. Variations arise from reporting dates, inclusion of non-fee-generating assets, uncalled committed capital, treatment of leverage, and valuation methodology.
The largest single source of divergence is regulatory AUM versus net AUM: the former counts gross long and short positions at notional value, which can produce a figure several times larger for heavily leveraged strategies. Reported figures are therefore not directly comparable across managers.
Do hedge funds outperform index funds?
On average, aggregate hedge fund indices have lagged simple equity index returns over most long periods, once fees are accounted for. Warren Buffett’s well-known 2008 wager against a fund-of-hedge-funds, which the S&P 500 won comfortably over ten years, made the point publicly.
That said, averages conceal enormous dispersion. The best hedge funds have delivered exceptional risk-adjusted returns over decades, and many investors allocate to them for low correlation with equities rather than for higher absolute returns. The difficulty is identifying which managers will perform in advance – and the strongest performers are frequently closed to new capital.
