Citadel CEO Confirms AI Agents Cut Multi-Month Research Work to Hours at Stanford Forum

According to Beating, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin confirmed at the 2026 Stanford Leadership Forum that the hedge fund’s internal AI agents have dramatically accelerated advanced financial research. Work that previously required financial PhD holders weeks or months to complete is now being completed by the company’s AI systems in hours or days. Griffin acknowledged witnessing the rapid automation of the firm’s core research layer, citing historian Niall Ferguson’s observation that “in an AI world, humans are the horses that cars replaced.”