Clearwater Analytics, a company developing accounting, compliance, and risk reporting tools for asset managers, said on Monday it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire investment management platform Enfusion for $1.5 billion. Clearwater, which says it has obtained an $800 million loan to fund the transaction, along with a $200 million revolving line of […]

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• NATO pit elite divers against new sensors to protect undersea cables from sabotage.
• Foreign adversaries have increasingly targeted undersea cables and underwater infrastructure.
• The training marks another shift in how NATO countries are preparing for future warfare.

NATO sent special operations divers to test new systems designed to help shield critical underwater infrastructure from damage and sabotage, growing problems.

Underwater cables and pipelines providing internet connectivity and energy have been damaged in a string of alarming incidents in recent years, with accusations of sabotage being thrown around about several just in the past couple of months.

These incidents highlight the vulnerability of these lines, but the NATO alliance is looking for answers.

Last fall, elite special operations divers from within the NATO alliance practiced bypassing underwater electronic detection sensors as part of an effort to boost protection for critical underwater infrastructure. NATO shared footage this week of the November training event — Exercise Bold Machina 2024 in La Spezia, Italy — as well as commentary from leadership.

The 13-nation event was the first of its kind, said US Navy Capt. Kurt Muhler, the maritime development director at the NATO Special Operations Headquarters, and was designed to test new sensors that could be used to defend against underwater sabotage attempts. This exercise, which Defense News first reported on, also tested allied special operations divers and their abilities to operate in increasingly transparent battlespaces.

Divers on offensive operations may not always be able to rely on dark, opaque waters to conceal their movements, Muhler, who has held SEAL team leadership positions, said, citing increased advancements in underwater detection system technologies.

"It's not knowing if somebody knows, or if you're being detected," Muhler told Defense News last fall. "It is understanding that there is a system that has the capability to detect you, but that you know nothing about it and don't know exactly what the capability is."

Undersea cables, pipelines, and other critical underwater infrastructure are at risk

The joint exercise in Italy came as damage to critical underwater infrastructure has become increasingly worrisome to Western officials who are scrambling to deter more damage to cables from vessels often quietly linked to Russian and Chinese governments.

Several underwater cables have been damaged in the past two months, including one telecommunications line linking Finland and Germany and another connecting Finland and Estonia.

Finnish officials said that they found a 60-mile seabed trail suggesting a tanker linked to Russia might be responsible for cutting cables. And around the same time, cables linking Germany and Finland and Sweden and Estonia were damaged with a Chinese vessel detected nearby when the damage occurred.

Such damage has spurred British defense officials to create a new joint operation with 10 European countries throughout the Baltic Sea area, using artificial intelligence to monitor potential threats from ships.

Undersea cables are critical components of international telecommunication infrastructure and the global economy — around 745,000 miles of cables span global seabeds and help transmit 95% of international data, including around $10 trillion in financial transactions daily.

NATO officials highlighted growing threats to cables from Russia last year, noting surveillance activity from Russian units specializing in undersea sabotage. But the barrier to entry for sabotage isn't particularly high. Russia has submarine units known to specialize in underwater sabotage, but cables have also been damaged by commercial vessels simply dragging their anchors along the sea floor.

And the concerns about the risk of underwater cable and infrastructure damage are not limited to European waters. Damage just last week to cables off the coast of Taiwan left that island's officials suspecting intentional damage from China.

"The underwater domain is hard both to protect and hard to attack," said Alberto Tremori, a NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation scientist who helped oversee the November NATO exercise. "It's not easy to protect because it's a complex environment, it's a vast environment."

Los Angeles' municipal utility lacks a common safety procedure that may have kept water pumping to fire hydrants during an intentional power shutoff, though President Biden said the outage caused the problem.

Republicans, including President-elect Trump, have blamed Democratic officials — at least in part — for the water shortage, which has hampered efforts to fight devastating wildfires in Los Angeles County. However, Democrats have rebuked these claims, and on Thursday, Biden suggested the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) bore responsibility for shutting off power to pumps that fuel the hydrants.

"What I know from talking to the governor, there are concerns out there that there’s also been a water shortage," Biden told reporters. "The fact is the utilities, understandably, shut off power because they are worried the lines that carried energy were going to be blown down and spark additional fires. When it did that, it cut off the ability to generate pumping the water — that’s what caused the lack of water in these hydrants."

Biden noted that generators were being deployed following the shutdown to get power back to the pumps and ensure there is no longer a shortage of water to fight the fire.

TRUMP ACCUSES NEWSOM OF PRIORITIZING ENDANGERED FISH SPECIES OVER PROTECTING RESIDENTS FROM WILDFIRES

But a report from The Wall Street Journal unveiled Friday highlighted how LADWP is the only major utility company in California without an intentional shut-off protocol, known as a "Public Safety Power Shut Off" procedure. The protocol lays out plans for how to proactively shut down certain electricity lines during dangerous windstorms and limit the impact to public safety. 

"Being prepared for a power shutoff takes careful planning, which begins by designing our water systems the right way and working with local fire agencies and energy companies to ensure community safety," California Water Service, a private utility provider in the state, explains on its website FAQ page about public safety power shutoffs.

OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST-TURNED-FIREFIGHTER BATTLES CALIFORNIA BLAZES AS WILDFIRES CONTINUE TO BURN

"We go to great lengths beyond our standard procedures to ensure water service isn’t disrupted during a power shutoff," the company added. "Cal Water has been installing permanent generators at a number of our critical stations over the years, and we are working to bring in additional, portable generators for other stations. Our crews and employees have also been trained on emergency response procedures for when these widespread shutoffs occur."

Michael Wara, a lawyer who directs the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University and studies wildfire mitigation strategies, added in remarks to the Journal that "there is no need to make any trade-off between reliability and safety."

Edward Ring, the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, confirmed there are measures that could be taken to keep power to the pumps during an intentional shutoff. 

"They need to underground these power lines, that would be the solution, or they need to have parallel systems that go to vital services like fire hydrant pumps that are not on the same circuit as the lines that are going into households," he said.

‘DEVASTATING’: CALIFORNIA HAD RECORD RAINFALL LAST YEAR, BUT LACKED INFRASTRUCTURE TO STORE IT

A spokesperson for LADWP told Fox News Digital that in the absence of a public safety power shutoff protocol for Los Angeles, it has a different procedure in place to reduce fire risks while continuing vital functions. The spokesperson said that Los Angeles's urban environment is different from the environments that other California utility companies serve. 

"LADWP worked closely with the Los Angeles Fire Department to develop this emergency protocol," the spokesperson said. "LADWP's plan is audited every 3 years by an independent third party and is submitted to state regulators as required."

But, in the past, according to the Journal, LADWP has asserted it will not proactively shut off power ahead of heavy winds.

Former Los Angeles firefighter John Knox, who spoke with Fox News on Friday, said he was "surprised" to hear that fire hydrants were running dry, adding that there are "a lot of things that need to be asked by the people to get answers from these so-called leaders." 

"In my career I've never seen us have — every once in a while you might have a dry hydrant, but we do annual testing in January where we test all the fire hydrants and that didn't happen this year," Knox said. "That area has a very large reservoir with four huge tanks that are supposed to be filled at all times. It's my understanding also that they had one of them that's been out for maintenance for a year during peak brush season. 

"There's a lot of issues and a lot of things that need to be asked by the people to get answers from these so-called leaders."

• Some fire hydrants ran dry in LA due to enormous water demand and infrastructure problems.
• President-elect Trump wrongly blamed a separate debate over water from northern California.
• Here's what you need to know about the water supply problems in Los Angeles.

Some fire hydrants in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles ran dry this week after the wildfires overwhelmed the local water system.

The problem unleashed a flurry of criticism, including from President-elect Donald Trump. He accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom of refusing to sign a "water restoration declaration" that would have allowed water from northern California to flow into the areas burning in Los Angeles.

"He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn't work!), but didn't care about the people of California," Trump wrote on January 8 on his social media platform.

But the reasons the water ran out were about local infrastructure, California officials and water policy experts told Business Insider. They also refuted the existence of a "water restoration declaration" and said Trump used the delta smelt as a scapegoat for a separate — and much more complex — debate over water allocations from a watershed in northern California.

A spokesperson for Newsom called Trump's claims "pure fiction," and accused Trump of politicizing the disaster. A spokesperson for Trump's transition team pointed to a plan his administration developed in 2019 directing water to the Central Valley and Southern California. But a Newsom spokesperson and California water policy experts said that plan is unrelated to water in fire hydrants in Los Angeles.

Newsom on Friday ordered an investigation into the cause of lost water supply and pressure in municipal systems. The order followed a report by the Los Angeles Times that a large reservoir in Pacific Palisades was empty and out of service as flames engulfed entire neighborhoods. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said it took the Santa Ynez Reservoir offline in February for repairs to meet safe drinking water regulations.

How water from the reservoir might have helped firefighters tame the blazes remains unclear.

Fire hydrants ran dry because of infrastructure

Janisse Quiñones, head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said urban water systems aren't designed to supply enough water to fight wildfires.

"We had crews trying to mitigate this, and they had to evacuate," Quiñones said during a January 8 press conference. "We're fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is really challenging."

Quiñones said water demand was four times higher than usual for 15 hours straight as firefighters rushed to put out the flames. That depleted three 1 million gallon water tanks in Pacific Palisades between the afternoon of January 7 and early morning of January 8.

"Those tanks help with the pressure on the fire hydrants and the hills of Palisades," Quiñones said during a press conference. She explained that without enough pressure in the system, more water couldn't be pumped uphill into the tanks from a network of underground pipes and aqueducts, leaving hydrants dry. Officials couldn't refill the tanks fast enough as flames engulfed entire neighborhoods.

Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California Water Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank that tracks water use and storage data in California, characterized the water supply problems as an "infrastructure bottleneck."

"Water flows from the reservoirs into this very complicated network of pipes, pumps, and tanks that stretch all over LA. It's really like an electrical grid," Mount said. "Before the fire, the system was full, but then was drained."

However, the Santa Ynez Reservoir — which holds 117 million gallons of water — was empty. Had the reservoir been operable, water pressure in the Palisades would have lasted longer, Martin Adams, the former general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, told the Los Angeles Times. He added that while it would have helped, it wouldn't have saved the day.

Newsom on January 8 said up to 140 additional water tender truckers were deployed to assist in fighting the Eaton and Palisades fires.

At a January 9 briefing, LA Mayor Karen Bass said fire hydrants aren't constructed to handle such massive devastation. The water shortage was compounded by the fact that planes couldn't perform water drops from the air because of the high-speed Santa Ana winds.

"That was the reason that the devastation was so bad," Bass said. "The unprecedented wind, the strength of the wind, and the fact that the air support could not go."

There isn't a water shortage in southern California

Trump accused Newsom of causing a water shortage around LA. But southern California has plenty of water, despite the issues with fire hydrants, sources told BI.

Most reservoirs in southern California are full, Mount said. As of January 10 the Castaic Lake reservoir — the largest State Water Project reservoir in Southern California — was at 77% of its total capacity, per the California Department of Water Resources.

Mount said this was due to two years of record rainfall and snowpack in the northern Sierra Nevada mountain range, which feeds many reservoirs that serve southern Californians.

Mike McNutt, a spokesman for the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District that serves 75,000 people in northwest LA — including in Palisades — told CalMatters on January 8 that the water supply was "looking pretty solid."

What does the delta smelt have to do with this?

A spokesperson for Newsom said Trump "conflated two entirely unrelated things: the conveyance of water to Southern California and supply from local storage." The spokesperson added that there was no "water restoration declaration."

Mount agreed, as did Mark Gold, the Natural Resources Defense Council's water scarcity director and a board member of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

"There is no connection between the delta smelt and the water challenges of fighting a fire in Southern California," Mount said.

Mount said Trump may have been referring to a separate debate over how to allocate water exported from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — where water in northern California flows into the San Francisco Bay — to both agriculture and urban areas in the southern half of the state, including Los Angeles.

In December, the Biden administration and California officials finalized a plan that aimed to strike a balance among farmers, urban residents, and depleted fish populations including the delta smelt, CalMatters reported. The new regulations replaced those finalized during Trump's first term, which were litigated by Newsom's administration over concerns that the delta smelt, salmon, and steelhead trout would be pushed to extinction.

While Los Angeles does import water from the Bay Delta through the State Water Project, Gold reiterated there are no shortages in southern California.

The region also gets water from the eastern Sierra Nevada through the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Colorado River, and groundwater.

"The scapegoat for Trump has been the delta smelt because it's not exactly charismatic megafauna," Gold said, noting that endangered and threatened salmon, trout, and other fish are at risk.

January 12, 2024: This story has been updated to reflect the news that the Santa Ynez Reservoir has been offline since February last year, though it's unclear what effect that had on firefighting efforts.

Were you impacted by the Los Angeles fires and want to share your story? Email this reporter: Catherine Boudreau [email protected]

California does not have a water shortage, yet firefighters battling the brutal fires across Los Angeles are facing scarce resources to keep up with the blaze that has threatened thousands of lives, homes, land and wildlife. 

Meanwhile, critics challenge Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call to "not play politics," arguing that political mismanagement is precisely to blame.

"It's all political," Edward Ring, the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center think-tank, told Fox News Digital in an interview. "The entire cause is political, and they ironically politicize it by saying it's about climate change, which is a political wedge that they use all the time, which is really one of the least of the factors causing this."

Experts lay blame primarily on the state's handling of its forestry management and a lesser-known problem, the state's outdated water reserves system. California's existing reservoirs can only hold so much water, and many were built in the mid-20th century. 

Last year, the state experienced record-breaking rainfall after an atmospheric river event, but the existing water infrastructure faced difficulties managing the sudden influx of water. A significant portion of that rainfall was dumped into the ocean. 

PALISADES FIRE: HEIDI MONTAG, SPENCER PRATT LOSE HOME; CELEBRITIES FLEE RITZY NEIGHBORHOOD  

Ring also pointed to "environmentalist extremists" in the state who have pushed for heavier regulations like the Endangered Species Act, which requires freshwater to flow through rivers and into the Pacific Ocean to protect the endangered delta smelt and salmon. The mandates restrict how much water can be diverted to storage, even during wet years.

"There is plenty of water," Ring argues, but the primary challenge in transporting water south to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and cities in Southern California isn’t infrastructure capacity—it’s environmental policies. He points to a "consensus among the bureaucrats and board directors" overseeing California’s water management that prioritizes keeping more water in rivers to support the endangered fish.

"That’s true as far as it goes," he said, but despite these efforts, the salmon and smelt populations have not recovered. Additionally, there is growing concern that sturgeon may soon be classified as endangered as well. 

"These endangered fish are being used as the reason to leave water in the rivers," he said.

PACIFIC PALISADES INFERNO FORCES THOUSANDS TO FLEE CALIFORNIA HOMES; GOV. NEWSOM DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY 

Urban areas, like Los Angeles, have highly developed drainage systems that channel stormwater directly into the ocean. They were originally designed with flood prevention in mind, not water storage, so this presents an additional challenge for the area. 

"They bring water in off of the California Aqueduct, and they import water into Los Angeles, and they haven't brought enough in there, and their reservoirs are depleted," Ring said. "But the biggest problem, because you're not going to drain even a half-full reservoir fighting a fire, is the water infrastructure in Los Angeles, and the water infrastructure in Los Angeles has been neglected. And the reason it's been neglected is that they want the money for other projects."

"The bottom line is they haven't spent money on it, and they've justified that by saying, we have to use less water," he continued. "And so they've been encouraging people, and in some cases, rationing, or even forcing people to use less water. And as a result, you don't have a system that's as robust."

One recent ex-California lawmaker said the state's lack of water infrastructure is "devastating California." 

ELON MUSK ANNOUNCES SPACEX WILL PROVIDE FREE STARLINK TERMINALS IN LA AMID RAGING FIRES

California voters passed Proposition 1 in 2014, also known as the Water Quality, Supply and Infrastructure Improvement Act, which authorized $2.7 billion in bonds to increase the state's water storage capacity through building new reservoirs and groundwater storage facilities. Yet as of January 2025, no new reservoirs have been completed under Prop. 1.

"And here it's been all these years, and we haven't done a shovel full of dirt to move to make the project," Dahle said. "The project is just not funded, and we had $100 billion in surplus, and we didn't fund it. And so that's the frustrating part, I think, for most Californians, is that when we had the money, and we didn't do anything about it."

The largest of the wildfires, the Eaton Fire near Altadena and Pasadena, has scorched more than 27,000 acres, Cal Fire reported as of midday Thursday. 

When reached for comment, Newsom's spokesperson Izzy Gardon told Fox News Digital, "The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need."

• Job cuts are continuing into 2025 following waves of reductions last year.
• Companies such as Meta, Microsoft, and BlackRock are conducting layoffs.
• See the list of companies letting workers go in 2025.

Layoffs and other workforce reductions are continuing in 2025, following two years of significant job cuts across tech, media, finance, manufacturing, and retail.

While companies' reasons for slimming their staff vary, the cost-cutting measures are coming amid a backdrop of technological change. In a recent World Economic Forum survey, some 41% of companies worldwide said they were expecting to reduce their workforces over the next five years because of the rise of artificial intelligence.

Companies such as Dropbox, Google, and IBM have previously announced job cuts related to AI. Tech jobs in big data, fintech, and AI are meanwhile expected to double by 2030, according to the WEF.

Here are the companies with job cuts planned or already underway in 2025 so far.

Meta

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told staff he "decided to raise the bar on performance management" and will act quickly to "move out low-performers," according to an internal memo seen by BI.

In a post on the company's internal communications platform, he said Meta will make "more extensive performance-based cuts" in this year's performance review cycle. Impacted US employees will be notified on February 10, he wrote.

The company has laid off more than 21,000 workers since 2022.

BlackRock is cutting 1% of its workforce.

BlackRock told employees it was planning to cut about 200 people of its 21,000-strong workforce, according to Bloomberg.

The reductions are more than offset by some 3,750 workers who were added last year and another 2,000 expected to be added in 2025.

BlackRock's president, Rob Kapito, and its chief operating officer, Rob Goldstein, said the cuts would help realign the firm's resources with its strategy, Bloomberg reported.

Bridgewater has cut about 90 staff.

Bridgewater Associates cut 7% of its staff in January in an effort to stay lean, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

The layoffs at the world's largest hedge fund bring its head count back to where it was in 2023, the person said.

The company's founder, Ray Dalio, said in a 2019 interview that about 30% of new employees were leaving the firm within 18 months.

The Washington Post is cutting 4% of its non-newsroom workforce.

The Washington Post is eliminating less than 100 employees in an effort to cut costs, Reuters reported in January.

A spokesperson told the wire service that the changes would occur across multiple areas of the business and indicated that the cuts wouldn't affect the newsroom.

"The Washington Post is continuing its transformation to meet the needs of the industry, build a more sustainable future and reach audiences where they are," the spokesperson said, according to Reuters.

Microsoft is planning an unspecified number of cuts.

Microsoft is planning job cuts soon, and the company is taking a harder look at underperforming employees as part of the reductions, according to two people familiar with the plans.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed cuts but declined to share details on the number of employees being let go.

"At Microsoft we focus on high performance talent," the spokesperson said. "We are always working on helping people learn and grow. When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action."

Ally is cutting less than 5% of workers.

The digital-financial-services company Ally is laying off roughly 500 of its 11,000 employees, a spokesperson confirmed to BI.

"As we continue to right-size our company, we made the difficult decision to selectively reduce our workforce in some areas, while continuing to hire in our other areas of our business," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also said the company was offering severance, out-placement support, and the opportunity to apply for openings at Ally.

Ally made a similar level of cuts in October 2023, the Charlotte Observer reported.

Is your company conducting layoffs? Got a tip?

If you're an employee with a tip about coming job cuts, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out.

• Bridgewater Associates cut 7% of staff, or about 90 people.
• The hedge fund, which manages $172 billion, is known for its radical transparency and high turnover.
• The company last laid off people in 2023 to cut costs and free up resources

Bridgewater Associates cut 7% of its staff on Monday in an effort to stay lean, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

The layoffs bring headcount back to where it was in 2023 for the world's largest hedge fund, the person said. It's unclear which divisions were impacted by the cuts.

Bloomberg first reported the layoffs, including that 90 people were affected. Four of the firm's funds posted double-digit returns last year, Bloomberg said.

The Connecticut-based company last laid off people in 2023 to cut costs and free up resources. At the time, it eliminated about 100 jobs in a workforce of roughly 1,300 employees.

Last year, Bridgewater's high-profile hires included macro traders Jerome Saragoussi and Ben Melkman, and Ziad Hindo, a veteran investor with Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.

The company is still hiring — the firm lists three open jobs for its Shanghai office.

Ray Dalio founded the firm in 1975 and relinquished his voting rights in 2022. Nir Bar Dea, who started as a management associate in 2015, is now CEO.

The hedge fund had about $172 billion under management as of November, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Bridgewater is known for its culture of radical transparency and pushing employees.

Dalio instituted a real-time rating system in which employees used iPads to score each other. One former intern told BI last year that she loved the process.

Dalio said in a 2019 interview that about 30% of new employees leave the firm within 18 months.

Federal toxicology researchers on Monday finally published a long-controversial analysis that claims to find a link between high levels of fluoride exposure and slightly lower IQs in children living in areas outside the US, mostly in China and India. As expected, it immediately drew yet more controversy.

The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, is a meta-analysis, a type of study that combines data from many different studies—in this case, mostly low-quality studies—to come up with new results. None of the data included in the analysis is from the US, and the fluoride levels examined are at least double the level recommended for municipal water in the US. In some places in the world, fluoride is naturally present in water, such as parts of China, and can reach concentrations several-fold higher than fluoridated water in the US.

The authors of the analysis are researchers at the National Toxicology Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. For context, this is the same federal research program that published a dubious analysis in 2016 suggesting that cell phones cause cancer in rats. The study underwent a suspicious peer-review process and contained questionable methods and statistics.

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Comments

• Institutionalization was one of the biggest themes in hedge funds this year.
• A once-scrappy industry is starting to resemble private equity and venture capital.
• The biggest firms and new launches have evolved significantly from the days of a couple of guys and a Bloomberg.

The game has changed.

Hedge funds, led by the industry's biggest names who set the agenda for the multi-trillion-dollar sector, were once known for their scrappiness, speed, and reliance on the brains and vision of their founders.

Now, as the industry's investor base has shifted to long-term institutions from wealthy families and small funds-of-funds, hedge funds have become institutions of their own. 2024 may be the turning point for the space that, in 10 years' time, industry observers will look back on as the beginning of the next era.

The biggest managers in the space are preparing for life beyond their founders, long-standing funds are becoming more formulaic and bureaucratic, and new entrants need to raise more money than ever before.

Multistrategy managers like Millennium, Citadel, and Point72 have long been moving in this direction, but recent moves by each of the firms' founders point to a world in which these giants outlast their larger-than-life leaders.

Ken Griffin, Citadel's billionaire founder, said in November that he would be open to selling a stake in his $66 billion Miami-based asset manager. Millennium and the world's largest asset manager BlackRock have reportedly had talks about the latter taking a stake in the former.

Both firms are set to outlast their founders, with built-out infrastructure and leadership teams littered with former Goldman Sachs partners. $72 billion Millennium, for example, created the office of the CIO in late 2022 and promoted longtime executive Ajay Nagpal to president, providing investors with a clear line into the next level of leadership beyond founder Izzy Englander.

The legendary founder of $35 billion Point72, meanwhile, has stepped away from trading his own book of stocks, which is how he burst onto the scene decades ago.

While Steve Cohen spends plenty of time and money on the baseball team he owns, the New York Mets, a person close to the firm said the decision to step back from running a book was not an indication that he's spending any less time working at his manager.

In a recent internal town hall, this person said, he described no longer having a book under his purview as "freeing" as he can spend more time on strategic initiatives for the firm. Without a portfolio to manage, the market's hours no longer dictate Cohen's schedule — a flexibility he appreciates as he balances running the manager and his baseball team.

For example, in mid-October, Cohen was set to appear on a panel at investment consultant Albourne Partners' annual conference in New York, but canceled because the Mets had gone on a run in the playoffs, people familiar with the event told Business Insider.

Succession, quality launches, and a promising environment

Beyond the main multistrategy names, a number of long-running firms across the industry are, structurally, starting to look more like peers in private equity than smaller rivals in the hedge fund space.

Places like Elliott Management centralized decision-making and created more internal structure, which has frustrated some veterans of Paul Singer's asset manager but provides the needed hierarchy.

Meanwhile, firms like Two Sigma and Bridgewater have officially moved on from their founders with new leadership. Brevan Howard's billionaire founder Alan Howard no longer trades for his firm.

At the other end of the industry, the bar for new launches has increased substantially, and the next generation of industry leaders are starting the firms with a much more institutional feel than even five years ago. Bobby Jain's $5.3 billion launch in July, for example, had plenty of big-name hires and titles right from the start.

In 2023, the average fund launched with $300 million, according to Goldman Sachs' prime brokerage division. PivotalPath, the industry data tracker run by Jon Caplis, said in an end-of-year report that it expects 2024 to be similar, driven by the increase of multi-managers allocating externally.

It's been driven by a focus from allocators on "quality" launches, PivotalPath's report states; the firm is tracking 145 new funds launching between the start of 2024 and the second quarter of 2025 with founders who come from funds with more than $1 billion.

If you're able to command enough capital — either from a platform like Millennium or big allocators like pensions, sovereign wealth funds, and endowments — it should be worth it. Longtime industry players and investors believe it is shaping up to be a strong period for the industry thanks to increased volatility that will allow actively managed investment firms to shine.

"Our underlying hedge fund managers are active, fundamental stock pickers who seek to identify the best opportunities and offer differentiated exposure," wrote New York-based fund-of-funds Old Farm Partners in a recent note that focused on why active management should shine in the coming years.

"Given the argument that we have laid out in this paper, we think the current market backdrop should provide a favorable setup for our strategy going forward."

Advances in robotics and seabed electrification have enabled a trio of startups to pursue deep sea reverse osmosis.

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• The biggest hedge funds are battling it out to attract and retain top talent and outperform peers.
• Business Insider has talked to elite hedge funds to get a peek into their recruiting processes.
• From internships to how they hire for tech, here's what we know about getting a job at a hedge fund.

The war for the best hedge fund talent cuts across all levels and positions. Firms like Citadel, Point72, D.E. Shaw, and Bridgewater are in constant competition for the best and brightest to help them gain an edge in the cutthroat industry. 

These behemoth funds are now putting serious time and resources into recruiting for internship and training programs to create a steady employee pipeline.

Eye-popping pay, prestige, challenging work environments, and the promise of working with some of the best investors in the industry means there's a lot of competition for a spot at one of these firms. 

The money is top-shelf, even for financial services jobs.

These funds, which have grown into behemoths, are now contributing serious time and resources to recruit for internship and training programs that could better guarantee them a steady employee pipeline.

Eye-popping pay, prestige, challenging work environments, and the promise of working with some of the best investors in the industry means they have a pretty attractive proposition to offer.

Internships at quant fund D.E. Shaw can pay up to $22,000. Entry-level analysts and software engineers get paid above 6 figures a year. Portfolio managers with winning strategies can take home millions. 

Business Insider has talked to some of the biggest hedge fund managers about how they attract talent, as well as ways to join their ranks and be successful at their firms. Here's everything we know. 

Internships and fellowships

The opaque and secretive world of hedge funds might not necessarily be an obvious choice for many college graduates. Massive money managers are launching new programs to change that and attract young, diverse wunderkinder at earlier stages than before. 

• Inside Balyasny's ATLAS Program for High School Students
• Why Balyasny, Bridgewater, and Point72 are engaging students from underrepresented backgrounds about hedge funds
• Bridgewater's chief diversity officer explains how the hedge fund is using its new fellowship program to create a pipeline of diverse talent in finance 

• Here's how to land a spot at Citadel's elite summer internship 
• A D.E. Shaw internship could land a dream gig at the secretive hedge fund. Here's what it takes. 
• What it takes to stand out as an intern at Steve Cohen's Point72 and land a job offer, according to 2 portfolio managers and its program director 
• Citadel's Ken Griffin's advice to interns: Hustle during your 20s and be aggressive when asking for a promotion

Analyst and investment training programs

Typically, hedge funds acquire their investment talent after a few years of working at an investment bank. Increasingly though, the industry's top players are paying graduates to train through intensive programs that can lead to joining investment teams straight after college. 

• How to get accepted into Point72's ultra-elite analyst training program, whose acceptance rate is less than 1%  
• This Citadel training program is harder to get into than Harvard and can lead to a six-figure salary with the elite hedge fund after graduation 

Even the way up-and-coming portfolio managers cut their teeth has evolved.

• How Dmitry Balyasny's $21 billion hedge fund is looking to get ahead in the war for investment talent
• Inside Point72's boot camp for developing all-star portfolio managers, where Steve Cohen is known to grill up-and-comers who think they're ready for the big time

Tech jobs and training programs

Hedge funds have long been competing with the finance industry and top tech companies for top technologists. Engineers and algorithm developers are key to helping researchers, data scientists, and traders develop cutting-edge investment strategies and platforms. Quant shop D.E. Shaw also has a unique approach to finding talent.

• Why quant giant D.E. Shaw seeks out academics, doctors, and veterans to work at the $60 billion hedge fund
• Inside Citadel's exclusive engineering program that's helped the $47 billion hedge fund snap up talent from Google and Goldman Sachs
•  Here's how to get a job at Billionaire Izzy Englander's Millennium, from the programing language to know to the interview questions to prep for
• Millennium is on the hunt for engineers in Miami. A top tech exec for the $58 billion hedge fund details the firm's new training program.
• Inside Man Group's popular training program for non-tech employees that teaches them skills to automate tasks and reduce errors in their work

Other resources, including recruiter insight and how to dominate a 5-hour interview

• Inside the hedge-fund talent war: How elite funds are battling for star portfolio managers
• The talent brokers of quant trading: The headhunters at the forefront of Wall Street's systematic-trading and data-science hiring frenzy
• Try our searchable database of more than 350 Wall Street headhunters to find your dream job in private equity, investment banking, or hedge funds 
• Meet the Gatekeepers: The top private equity, hedge fund recruiting firms to get a buy-side job
• Inside the 5-hour psychological interview that can make or break your career at Citadel, Blackstone, and other finance titans 

Oil wells from the Dutch colonial era lie scattered across Indonesia, polluting the earth and destroying locals' chances at making a living off anything but oil. We visited the workers who risk their lives daily to survive off the little oil that's left.

• Meta plans a $10 billion global underwater cable project spanning 25,000 miles, TechCrunch reported.
• The project is reportedly in the early planning stages, though the exact route has not been announced.
• Meta aims for sole cable ownership of the cable, avoiding geopolitical tension areas like the Red Sea.

Meta is reportedly planning to build a fiber-optic underwater cable that would traverse the globe, TechCrunch reported.

Sources close to Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, said the company may spend over $10 billion on a nearly 25,000-mile project. Meta would reportedly own 100% of the cable's capacity, per TechCrunch. It's unclear what role, if any, AI plays in the project's motivations.

TechCrunch reported the project is in its early stages, but the intended capacity and route are not public. Planning is reportedly being led by Meta's South Africa office.

Underwater fiber-optic cables are frequently used to carry telecommunication signals over large areas of water. Meta is part owner of various cables including 2Africa, a submarine telecommunications cable extending across Africa's coastline.

Google is the sole owner of 17 submarine cable holdings, while Amazon and Microsoft are part owners in a handful, telecom analyst Teleography found.

Entrepreneur Sunil Tagare first reported the plan, telling TechCrunch that the cable would cost $2 billion but would jump to over $10 billion in the next five to 10 years. Tagare told TechCrunch that he speculates India's capacity to build data centers more cheaply than the US could explain why the cable may end in India.

"It will start on the East Coast of the US and go straight to India with a stop in South Africa (for powering and restoration purposes)," Tagare wrote on LinkedIn. "And it will also go from India straight to the Western Coast of the US with a powering and restoration stop in Darwin, Australia — avoiding the Red Sea, the South China Sea and more importantly Egypt, Marseilles, the Straits of Malacca and Singapore — all of whom are now major single points of failure."

The project would take years to complete, given limited resources like cable ships, TechCrunch reported.

TechCrunch reported that the cables could also be strategically placed to avoid areas of geopolitical tension where cables have been damaged, such as the Baltic or Red Seas.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment.