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.”
 1. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange  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 |