IT hedge fund Qube is hiring flesh-and-blood portfolio managers for a new equities unit, according to two people familiar with the company’s plans.

The quant giant, which now manages $50 billion across its suite of strategies, is developing a team of portfolio managers who will trade long and short positions across different sectors and report to investor Naveen Baid, the people told Business Insider.

The manager, whose assets have increased more than 300% since the beginning of 2024, is diversifying beyond its quantitative roots, like other well-known systematic managers.

The effort is described as the company’s first internal group of human investors. Last fall, the company launched a team of sector-focused analysts whose business ideas are fed to the group’s leader, former Balyasny executive Stephen Irvine, as Business Insider previously reported.

The difference between the two initiatives is that the new group will operate similarly to a multi-manager fund focused on stocks, with each PM able to run their own trades and control their own portfolios, while Irvine’s group is more like an alpha capture program that uses analyst insights to build a best-ideas type portfolio.

London-based Qube declined to comment.

The company has good exposure to core stock managers through outside investments, as Business Insider previously reported.

Like many managers who have rapidly increased their assets, Qube is diversifying its capital through different strategies. There are many examples in the systematic world: Quant pioneer DE Shaw now manages billions with human stock pickers and macro investors, and Two Sigma has expanded into asset classes like private markets and real estate.