In a record year for hedge fund profits, Chris Hohn’s TCI stood out. The firm generated $18.9 billion in gains for investors in 2025, the biggest annual haul ever, according to a just-released annual survey of the top 20 money managers by Rich Sopher, chairman of LCH Investments.
“The gains made by TCI, including the record largest gain in 2025, continue to be quite remarkable. Over the past three years TCI has made $40 billion net of fees for investors,” Sopher said.
That put TCI fifth in this year’s ranking of net gains since inception with a total of $68.4 billion. Sopher added that TCI has jumped to fifth from fourteenth in only three years.
TCI’s ranking is even more impressive, as the firm only launched in 2004, while the few that outrank it in overall gains have been around decades longer. TCI ties with Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital, also launched in 2004, as the youngest firms on the list. But Pershing Square is at the bottom in terms of overall net gains, ranking nineteenth out of 20.
Over time, the top 20 managers have made investors almost $1 trillion — $969.9 billion to be exact — according to LCH. Last year, it calculated that they made $115.8 billion net of fees for their investors.
The biggest and the oldest funds tend to make the LCH list, and Bridgewater is no exception. It came in second last year, earning investors $15.6 billion. The oldest hedge fund in the group that is still operating, Bridgewater in 2025 jumped from fourth to third in net gains since inception with a total of $79.1 billion. Ray Dalio, who sold the last of his stake and left the board last year, started the firm in 1975. (The only firm older than Bridgewater is Soros Fund Management, started by George Soros in 1973 but closed in 2011. While Soros no longer tops the list, he’s still in tenth place in terms of net gains since inception, having distributed $43.9 billion to his investors.)
D.E. Shaw was third last year, with $12.7 billion in net gains. That allowed it to maintain its second place in the overall rankings with net gains of $79.9 billion since inception. It, too, is one of the oldest funds on the list, dating back to 1988.
When looking at net gains since inception, Ken Griffin’s Citadel maintained its perch at the top, making $90.4 billion for investors since it launched in 1990. But last year it only had net gains of $7.4 billion, ranking fifth among its peers.
Citadel also has a practice of returning capital to investors, which left its hedge fund with $65.9 billion under management at the end of 2025. That means that over time Citadel has returned $24.5 billion to investors — the most of any active hedge fund. As a result, its asset base is smaller than the next five firms on the list.
Paul Singer’s Elliott Management is the biggest of the firms, with $80 billion under management. But despite that huge amount of capital to work with, it only made $5.7 billion for investors last year, ranking sixth. It also ranks sixth in terms of net gains since inception ($59.5 billion) and is the second-oldest firm still in existence, having launched in 1977.
Sopher noted that the names in the top 20 list did not change last year, and there was little movement in the rankings, with just a few firms switching places.
Overall, it was a strong year. “Hedge funds made $543 billion for their investors in 2025, the highest ever dollar gains generated by the group,” he said. “A combination of record high assets under management, strong equity and bond markets, and sizeable macro trading opportunities all contributed to this strong performance.”
The top firms continued to do the best. “In 2025, the top 20 managers have generated 41 percent of the gains made by all hedge fund managers. Yet they only represented 16.6 percent of the assets under management,” Sopher said. “The money weighted return of the top 20 in 2025 was 15.7 percent — far better than the rest of the hedge fund universe.” For comparison, the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index returned 12.6 percent last year.
