Trading Technologies (TT) has deepened its partnership with fintech firm SIGMA AI through a strategic minority investment, tasking the company with building a proprietary AI and innovation hub to embed artificial intelligence across TT’s global trading platform.
The move, which expands on an existing collaboration established in 2024, aims to accelerate TT’s AI adoption for both internal productivity and new client-facing products. In a significant signal of intent, SIGMA AI’s founder and CEO, Andy Simpson, will also take on the new role of Head of AI and Innovation at TT, reporting directly to CEO Justin Llewellyn-Jones.
According to Simpson, the decision for a minority investment over a full acquisition was a deliberate strategy to protect the agility and innovative culture of the smaller firm.
“This structure is specifically designed to keep us nimble, sharp, and innovative, preserving our ability to ‘fail fast’ and iterate without being swamped,” he tells TradingTech Insight. “It allows us to deliver the best features and strategy to TT without being beholden to the strategic narrative of a larger organisation. That independence is critical.”
The newly formed AI and Innovation Hub will have a dual mandate. “Fundamentally, this is about two things: increasing TT’s internal productivity and implementing new AI-driven products for their customers, all while we continue to sell our own SaaS products to our client base,” Simpson explains.
For Simpson, the strategic driver for embedding AI is the increasing complexity of the market itself. “We are living in a more fragmented world of trading with more bilateral activity and new venues of liquidity springing up,” he says. “TT is in a powerful position to help people access those pools, and AI will have to be at the heart of that. It’s the essential tool for helping clients navigate that complexity.”
Looking ahead, Simpson sees AI transforming the core functions of the trading lifecycle, moving beyond hype to practical application.
“Personalised and actionable insights, and more broadly real-time analytics, have become critical in capital markets,” he notes. “While TT is active in leveraging analytics in areas such as execution, TCA and surveillance, the application of AI allows access to data and information to be completely re-imagined, enabling a paradigm shift in the provision of real-time analytics. And this is where Sigma AI excels, we are experts in the application of full spectrum AI methodologies, including GenAI, deep learning and neural networks.”
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