With less than a year on track and founded by two friends with little experience in the financial market, the Santa Catarina-based asset management firm Quantimatics would go unnoticed by most investors.
But the execution capabilities that their quantitative models have demonstrated so far have been enough to attract the attention of Falcon Capital, a London-based firm with €300 million under management and €4 billion in assets under administration.
Instead of investing heavily solely in its own analysis – as is typical in this market – Falcon is betting heavily on emerging asset managers around the world. To this end, it created the multi-manager program, an asset accelerator that, like startups, receives funding to demonstrate its capabilities.
Only 15 asset managers were selected worldwide, with Quantimatics being the first Brazilian firm to receive investment from the British firm. The first fund supported by the British asset manager started with R$10 million under management. Of this amount, Quantimatics raised only R$1 million, while Falcon contributed the remaining 90%.
Falcon also committed to making further investments of the same magnitude in Quantimatics' future fundraising rounds. With this investment, the asset manager, which previously had only R$ 2 million under management, boosted its assets to nearly R$ 12 million.
“Our results are very good, but we are not JP Morgan, we didn’t come from famous funds. So we have to earn our space,” says João Guilherme Cruz, CEO and co-founder of Quantimatics, to NeoFeed .
"Many fund managers in Brazil do a good job, but they don't know that this type of fundraising is possible. It's a way to build a track record with a large fund," he adds, who created the company together with João Victor Fernandes, who is the CIO and CTO of the asset management firm.
Both engineers, the co-founders met six years ago and became friends. At the time, each had their own startup: Cruz, Tiffins, and Fernandes, DieselBank. Both were sold. With the money, in 2023, they decided to venture into the asset management business.
Before launching their asset management firm, Cruz and Fernandes decided to delve deeper into the business model. With multi-market asset managers suffering redemptions of hundreds of billions of reais in Brazil and with few quantitative funds achieving good results in the local market, the decision was to look abroad.
Between 2024 and 2025, the duo set up operations outside the country and delved deeper into quantitative models geared towards the international market.
With its registered structures in the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands, Quantimatics' first fund began operating about eight months ago. Approximately 2,000 transactions were made during that period, none of which required human intervention.
“We use a strategy called scalping . We make about 25 trades a day, and in each one, we stay in the position for 20 to 30 minutes. It's not high-frequency trading. But it's not infrequent either,” says the CEO.
The strategy has been successful. Between June 2025 and January 2026, the fund yielded 19.4% in dollars, operating exclusively in the euro/dollar pair in the foreign exchange market. According to Cruz, the decision to specialize solely in these assets is due to the high trading volume, exceeding US$2 trillion per day. "It's practically 'unmanipulated'," he says.
The plans include expanding trading into the commodities market. “This would help diversify the portfolio. We don't want to be focused on just one currency pair. At some point, we will trade multiple currency pairs. But we need the time and resources to invest.”
Lean, the asset management firm has only two employees besides the co-founders: an analyst who monitors the algorithm's operation during nighttime trading, and an intern who assists Fernandes in building models. All work remotely.
The CEO says the plan, once they are larger, is to establish a physical structure in Florianópolis. The expectation is that, with Falcon's acceleration, this goal will be closer to reality.
The invitation to participate in the program came through LinkedIn. “This is a closed industry that has been very tarnished in the past. So, I started creating a lot of content about what it's like to be a fund manager, and they ended up inviting me for a chat.”
"For someone who has never managed funds professionally, focused only on intelligence, being accepted by a strategic fund with over R$1 billion under management is a huge achievement."
One hand washes the other.
The fund resulting from the partnership, although managed by Quantimatics, is overseen by Falcon Capital and is distributed only in Europe and the United Kingdom. Cruz states, however, that all intellectual property protection of the algorithms remains restricted to his management company.
The First Loss program, for which Quantimatics was selected, provides for the payment of a 2.5% management fee to Falcon on the fund's total amount and the sharing of a 25% performance fee on all fund income.
Initially, all losses from the operation are borne by Quantimatics. Therefore, if the fund falls by 10%, Quantimatics loses all the money invested, and Falcon recovers the 90% it contributed. If it makes a profit, 75% of the performance fee goes to Quantimatics and 25% to Falcon.
“We are leveraged in London. It’s a more aggressive operation. So, the funds don’t usually exceed US$10 million in these programs. In this fund, which started operating on February 2nd, we want to have between R$10 million and R$25 million,” said Cruz.
The CEO's expectation is to reach the second stage of this program, intended for funds that manage to achieve at least a 15% return in dollars over 12 months.
If the goal is achieved, Quantimatics would become eligible to receive new investments from Falcon without needing to contribute its own resources, in addition to the guarantee of an extra investment of R$ 25 million to R$ 60 million.
Regarding the division of fees , Cruz states that the terms for the second phase of the program have not yet been defined.
In addition to being an alternative for raising capital at a time that is still challenging for multi-market funds, the CEO sees the program as a chance to gain more visibility abroad.
Cruz says that one of the goals this year is to raise US$1 million in a seed round to expand Quantimatics' structure. Without any exclusivity agreement with Falcon, the CEO continues to hold talks with potential international investors, in addition to seeking funding for his funds through family offices.
The goal is to reach R$ 35 million under management by the end of the year, considering both its original structure and the one created in partnership with Falcon.
