This content is from: Portfolio
The 2015 Tech 50: Sebastián Ceria
The Axioma CEO jumps to No. 43 on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.

Corporations consuming technology services are not the only ones benefiting from the cost, capacity and flexibility benefits of cloud computing. It is also a boon to developers and suppliers of quantitative software like Axioma. CEO Sebastián Ceria says it is an essential example of “technological modernity,” without which his New York–based portfolio systems and analytics shop would be having a very hard time satisfying its global customer base of 200 financial institutions, including 12 of the top 20 asset managers. “The cloud is a gigantic data center for which we don’t pay fixed costs,” explains Ceria, a Carnegie Mellon University Ph.D. in operations research who started Axioma in 1998 as a mathematical modeling consulting firm and in 2001 veered into software vending, specializing in portfolio optimization. Five years later Axioma moved into the risk management systems market, and by relying on new-generation technological advances — automated programming and data management tools, as well as the highly scalable cloud — it could more readily invest in the intellectual property, organizational agility and client focus that Ceria believes define Axioma’s competitive and innovative edge. “We had the advantage of coming into the market later,” the 50-year-old admits. Incumbent rivals in the risk software business, in common with many banks, were “stuck with ten- to 15-year-old systems and couldn’t change fast enough,” he says. “That creates opportunities for companies like ours.” Privately held Axioma’s top-line revenue is growing 20 percent annually, Ceria says, and its employee count, now 140, is increasing at an even faster clip.
See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”
![]() 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. ![]() 3. Phupinder Gill CME Group ![]() 4. Lance Uggla Markit ![]() 5. Robert Goldstein BlackRock |
![]() 6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg ![]() 7. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group ![]() 8. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures ![]() 9. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments ![]() 10. Adena Friedman Nasdaq OMX Group |
![]() 11. David Craig Thomson Reuters ![]() 12. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings ![]() 13. Michael Spencer ICAP ![]() 14. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. ![]() 15. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing |
![]() 16. Chris Concannon BATS Global Markets ![]() 17. Christopher Perretta State Street Corp. ![]() 18. Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group ![]() 19. Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co. ![]() 20. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co. |
![]() 21. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets ![]() 22. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings ![]() 23. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings ![]() 24. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. ![]() 25. Frank Bisignano First Data Corp. |
![]() 26. John Marcante Vanguard Group ![]() 27. Joseph Squeri Citadel ![]() 28. Lou Eccleston TMX Group ![]() 29. Claude Honegger Credit Suisse ![]() 30. Chris Corrado MSCI |
![]() 31. David Gledhill DBS Bank ![]() 32. John Bates Software AG ![]() 33. Michael Cooper BT Radianz ![]() 34. Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group ![]() 35. Sunil Hirani trueEX Group |
![]() 36. Hauke Stars Deutsche BÖrse ![]() 37. Brian Conlon First Derivatives ![]() 38. Jim Minnick eVestment ![]() 39. Lars Seier Christensen & Kim Fournais ![]() 40. Tyler Kim MaplesFS |
![]() 41. Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp. ![]() 42. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix ![]() 43. Sebastián Ceria Axioma ![]() 44. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America ![]() 45. Stephane Dubois Xignite |
![]() 46. Mazy Dar OpenFin ![]() 47. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software ![]() 48. Mas Nakachi OpenGamma ![]() 49. John Lehner BNY Mellon Technology Solutions Group ![]() 50. Jock Percy Perseus |