The 2014 Tech 50: Sebastián Ceria

July 08, 2014

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< The 2014 Tech 50: Moving Out of the Lab and Into the Cloud

Sebastián Ceria

Chief Executive Officer

Axioma

(PNR)

Financial institutions are well behind the technology curve, according to Sebastián Ceria. “From 2002 to 2007,” he asserts, firms “were so busy making money, they didn’t bring things up to date. Since the crisis hit they’ve been putting out fires. It’s a technology-driven business that hasn’t fully adapted.” As CEO of New York–based Axioma, Ceria aims to help close that gap. Chalk up the punditry to the 49-year-old’s professorial bent. An Argentinean native with a Ph.D. in operations research from Carnegie Mellon University, Ceria began teaching mathematical modeling at Columbia Business School in 1993. He formed Axioma as a consulting company in 1998 in response to businesses’ requests for his expertise. He steered the company toward financial applications. By 2001 it had transformed itself into a software developer, initially for portfolio optimization, then, starting in 2006, for risk management. Today, Axioma has 120 employees globally, and five of the top ten U.S. asset managers use its risk and portfolio construction tools. Ceria’s entrepreneurial instincts and insights have been instrumental in Axioma’s ability to rival bigger and older players, such as MSCI (see Chris Corrado, No. 32). “We were ahead of the market in seeing the need for daily updates and multiple models for multiple views of risk,” Ceria notes. “The market moved in our direction.”

The 2014 Tech 50