Jane Street is a for-profit trading firm established in 2000 and has a reputation for extreme secrecy and keeping a low profile, began hitting returns of 70 percent on its trades and investments. These returns have facilitated large amounts of political contributions from the group’s executives. The only remaining founder of the firm who has not retired contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to both Republican and Democratic candidates and PACs, sometimes directly opposing each other, while other executives, like James McClave and Emily Berger, contributed over $7 million through their 501(c)(4) to a group supporting President Joe Biden in 2024. ^{1 2 3}

Founding and History

Jane Street was founded in 2000 by traders from the financial firm Susquehanna and a developer who had worked at IBM. Of the four founders, only one, Rob Granieri, has not retired as of 2025. The company is known for its secrecy and what has been characterized as having a paranoid outlook. The firm, which is heavily into quantitative investing, built most of its systems with a little known programming language, OCaml, and so embraces the identity of being secret and enigmatic to the rest of the industry that it owns an original Enigma encryption machine from World War II at its headquarters. ^{4 5}

The firm was one of the early investors in exchange traded funds (ETFs), and other niche, obscure, and sometimes risky investment vehicles and strategies. Over the course of two decades the firm found more success and began accumulating more assets. In 2024, the firm had roughly $140 billion in assets under management, 80 percent of which was held by members of the firm. Because it does not trade outside funds, it is able to maintain much more privacy and secrecy than a hedge fund. ^{4 5}

The firm attracted attention during the COVID-19 pandemic when it began achieving enormous profits that have since risen to over 70 percent in 2024. ⁴ As it began to attract attention for its success, its former employee, Sam Bankman-Fried, was arrested, charged, and found guilty of financial crimes related to his failed crypto firm, FTX. ⁴

Finances

Jane Street is one of the most successful and high-volume trading firms in existence. Despite a smaller staff and a much smaller portfolio, managing roughly $140 billion, it routinely outperforms much larger commercial investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs. The firm’s enormous profits have generated much attention in the financial press. The firm was an early trader in ETFs and is one of the most prolific dealers in them currently. In 2023, the firm was responsible for 14 percent of all American market ETF trading and 20 percent in Europe. The firm estimates that it was similarly responsible for 41 percent of all bond ETF creations and redemptions. This means that in 2023, the firm dealt with $6.3 trillion, which the Financial Times points out is five times the entire annual stock trading volume of the London Stock Exchange. ^{6 4}

In 2023, the firm had more than $21.9 billion in gross revenue, and net revenue of $10 billion. 2023 was the fourth year in a row that the firm had generated net revenue of over $10 billion. ⁴

Organization Philosophy

Jane Street is well known for its obsession with secrecy and attempts to avoid attracting attention to itself. In keeping with this image, the firm owns a World War II-era Enigma encryption machine that is displayed at its headquarters. ⁴

Additionally, the firm has an unorthodox management structure. There is no CEO or other head officer, and the company prefers not to use executive titles at all. Rather, the roughly 40 equity holders in the firm manage different aspects of the company. These executives reportedly move departments frequently, and the company has been characterized as resembling “an incredibly profitable anarchist commune.” ^{4 7}

The firm is also a “quant” firm in that it relies heavily on algorithms and programs to guide its extremely high volume of trading. It uses an obscure programming language called OCaml. As of 2023, the company’s source code was over 25 million lines long. The Financial Times notes that this is roughly half the amount used by the Large Hadron Collider. ^{4 7}

Projects and Initiatives

In addition to its extensive trading activities, Jane Street also runs educational programs focused on STEM for recent high school graduates and college students. These programs are generally focused on providing training in mathematics and computer science, with a special emphasis on creative problem-solving and puzzles. Programs geared towards students further on in college also provide training and exposure to the firm’s basic trading methods. Longer term programs, usually running a month, cover all expenses for accepted students, including travel, housing, meals, and provide scholarships ranging from $5,000 to $7,500. ^{8 9 10}

The firm also runs two programs, WISE and Insight, that are limited to women, transgender and “gender expansive” people. ¹¹

People

The leadership structure at Jane Street is unorthodox. The firm does not have a CEO or any form of traditional management hierarchy. Rather, the roughly 40 equity holders work as flexible executives who frequently shift departments. The company has bee characterized by the Financial Times as being “an incredibly profitable anarchist commune.” ^{4 7}

Rob Granieri

Rob Granieri is the only remaining original founder of Jane Street who has not retired as of early 2025. He is not the CEO or similar high-ranking position, but is one of the many equity-holding executives who manage the company, though he has also been called a “first among equals.” He is associated with the firm’s focus on security and secrecy, which has been characterized as “paranoid.” Granieri told the Financial Times in 2021 that he comes to work every day believing that the company is “struggling to survive.” ^{7 4 6}

Seemingly in keeping with his trading philosophy of hedging bets and purchasing put options as insurance in the event of a market downturn, Granieri’s political contributions seem to be focused on minimizing risks. ²

In the 2024 cycle alone, Granieri contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates, ranging from major Republican U.S. House and Senate PACs, now-U.S. Senator Dave McCormick (R-PA), U.S. Senator John Thune (R-SD), and to various other conservative and Republican-supporting PACs. ²

However, at the same time, Granieri’s largest contribution of the cycle was $700,000 to the House Majority PAC, which supports Democrats in U.S. House races. This contribution was made the same day that he made a $198,000 contribution to a PAC supporting Republican House Whip Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) and two contributions of $123,900 each to the National Republican Congressional Committee. ²

Sam Bankman-Fried

Sam Bankman-Fried is a convicted felon who was arrested and prosecuted for financial crimes at his crypto firm, FTX. FTX collapsed, in part, due to wild risk-taking and a lack of caution and hedging. Bankman-Fried is noteworthy in the context of Jane Street because the firm hired him upon his graduation from Stanford University, as well as former Bankman-Fried girlfriend and FTX employee Caroline Ellison. ^{12 4}

James McClave and Emily Berger

James McClave and Emily Berger are a husband-and-wife pair that work at Jane Street. They are investors into artificial intelligence and are also major funders of Democratic Party causes and candidates. Notably, a non-profit that they run, BEMC 4 Association, was the second-largest reported organizational contributor to Future Forward USA Action, which was the main PAC supporting President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. In 2022, the 501(c)(4) contributed $7.2 million to the PAC, second only to George Soros’s Open Society Policy Center, which contributed $15.2 million. ³

1. ^[1] Wigglesworth, Robin, and Will Schmitt. “New Titans of Wall Street: How Jane Street Rode the ETF Wave to ‘Obscene’ Riches.” Financial Times, October 7, 2024, sec. Jane Street Capital. Accessed February 23, 2025. https://www.ft.com/content/f7cb25ba-7329-4291-b7d3-8a34ef84f9f0
2. “Browse Individual Contributions: Rob Granieri.” FEC.gov. Accessed February 24, 2025. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_name=%09GRANIERI%2C+ROBERT+&contributor_employer=Jane+Street+Capital&two_year_transaction_period=2024&min_date=01%2F01%2F2023&max_date=12%2F31%2F2024
3. Tolan, Casey. “One of the Top Donors to a Pro-Biden Dark-Money Group Is a Nonprofit Run by a Little-Known AI Investor | CNN Politics.” CNN, March 10, 2024. Accessed February 23, 2025.  https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/10/politics/pro-biden-dark-money-group-invs/index.html.
4. Wigglesworth, Robin, and Will Schmitt. “New Titans of Wall Street: How Jane Street Rode the ETF Wave to ‘Obscene’ Riches.” Financial Times, October 7, 2024, sec. Jane Street Capital. Accessed February 23, 2025. https://www.ft.com/content/f7cb25ba-7329-4291-b7d3-8a34ef84f9f0.
5. Sinha, Shreyas. “How Secret Quant Shop Jane Street Quietly Emerges As a Wall Street Powerhouse.” Observer, November 4, 2024. Accessed February 23, 2025.  https://observer.com/2024/11/jane-street-quantitative-trading/.
6. Wigglesworth, Robin. “Jane Street Is Big. Like, Really, Really Big.” Financial Times, April 29, 2024, sec. FT Alphaville. Accessed February 23, 2025.  https://www.ft.com/content/54671865-4c7f-4692-a879-867ef68f0bde.
7. Wigglesworth, Robin. “Jane Street: The Top Wall Street Firm ‘No One’s Heard of.’” Financial Times, January 28, 2021, sec. The Big Read. Accessed February 23, 2025.  https://www.ft.com/content/81811f27-4a8f-4941-99b3-2762cae76542.
8. ^[1] “Programs and Events.” Jane Street. Accessed February 24, 2025. https://www.janestreet.com/join-jane-street/programs-and-events/.
9. “AMP.” Jane Street. Accessed February 24, 2025. https://www.janestreet.com/join-jane-street/programs-and-events/amp/.
10. “JSIP.” Jane Street. Accessed February 24, 2025. https://www.janestreet.com/join-jane-street/programs-and-events/jsip/.
11. “Programs and Events.” Jane Street. Accessed February 24, 2025. https://www.janestreet.com/join-jane-street/programs-and-events/.
12. ^[1] Wigglesworth, Robin. “Jane Street Is Big. Like, Really, Really Big.” Financial Times, April 29, 2024, sec. FT Alphaville. Accessed February 23, 2025.  https://www.ft.com/content/54671865-4c7f-4692-a879-867ef68f0bde.