< The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge

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.

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The 2015 Tech 50

1. Jeffrey Sprecher Intercontinental Exchange 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. Building Resilient Portfolios: Infrastructure’s Strategic Advantage Sponsored by IFM Investors May 9, 2025 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