C lifford Asness is an American billionaire and a prominent figure in the world of quantitative investing. He is a co-founder and the chief investment officer of AQR Capital Management (Applied Quantitative Research), a major global investment management firm. A former PhD student of Nobel laureate Eugene Fama at the University of Chicago, Asness is a leading academic and practitioner of factor-based investing, which involves building portfolios based on quantifiable characteristics like value and momentum.

After working at Goldman Sachs, where he led the quantitative research desk, he co-founded AQR in 1998 with several colleagues. The firm became a pioneer in offering quantitative and factor-based strategies, traditionally used by hedge funds, to a wider range of institutional and retail investors. Asness is known for his prolific writing, his witty and often outspoken defense of quantitative investing, and his libertarian political views. His firm manages hundreds of billions of dollars, and his stake in it is the source of his fortune.