Nathaniel Simons (born 1966) is an American billionaire

hedge fund A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as ...

manager and

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the Public good (economics), public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private goo ...

. He is the founder of Meritage Group, an investment management firm managing over $12 billion in assets, co-founder of Prelude Ventures, a

clean tech Clean technology, in short cleantech, is any process, product, or service that reduces negative environmental impacts through significant energy efficiency improvements, the sustainable use of resources, or environmental protection activities. Cle ...

investment fund, and is the former co-chair of

Renaissance Technologies Renaissance Technologies LLC, also known as RenTech or RenTec, is an American hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York, on Long Island, which specializes in systematic trading using quantitative models derived from mathematical and statist ...

, one of the largest hedge funds in the world. He is the son of the founder of Renaissance Technologies,

Jim Simons Jim or James Simons may refer to: *Jim Simons (mathematician) (born 1938), mathematician and hedge fund manager *Jim Simons (golfer) (1950–2005), American golfer *Jimmy Simons (born 1970), Dutch footballer *Jimmy Simons, co-winner of 2001 Primeti ...

. Simons is also the co-founder and a director of the Sea Change Foundation, which focuses on climate change and clean energy policy.

Early life

The son of

James Simons James Harris Simons (; born 25 April 1938) is an American mathematician, billionaire hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Renaissance Technologies, a quantitative hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York. He and his f ...

, a mathematician and the founder of

, and

Barbara Simons Barbara Bluestein Simons (born January 26, 1941) is an American computer scientist and the former president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She is a Ph.D. graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and spent her early ca ...

, a computer scientist and former president of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM), he attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. There, he earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1989, followed by a master's degree in mathematics in 1994.

Career

Simons began his career at Cylink Corp in 1989. Since 1994, Simons has been a principal at Renaissance Technologies. At Renaissance, Simons worked as a data analyst from 1994 to 1995, then as a futures trader from 1995 to 1997. In 1997, he began the Meritage family of funds, which was spun off from Renaissance. Simons served as vice chair at Renaissance from 2006 to 2020 and is senior managing director and chair of Meritage Group. In 2009, Simons co-founded Prelude Ventures, a clean-technology

venture fund Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which hav ...

. In that same year, he was listed #20 on ''Fortune''s World's Top 25 Eco-Innovators. In 2015, Simons and his wife, Laura Baxter-Simons, joined the

Breakthrough Energy Coalition Breakthrough Energy is the umbrella name of several organizations, founded by Bill Gates in 2015, that aim to accelerate innovation in sustainable energy and in other technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It invests in a variety of s ...

. The coalition is a partnership of individuals who have pledged to invest in new energy technologies.

Philanthropy

In 2006, Simons co-founded Sea Change Foundation, focused on climate change and clean energy policy. In 2009, Simons spoke along with

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (Birth name, né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 ...

and Al Gore at the National Clean Energy Project

roundtable The Round Table ( cy, y Ford Gron; kw, an Moos Krenn; br, an Daol Grenn; la, Mensa Rotunda) is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that ...

. In discussing philanthropy's role in combating climate change, Simons stated:

I think the role of philanthropy is more than anything to just facilitate the process. There are many different stakeholders, and they all have to be brought together. The grid is perhaps the best example we can think of where there are many disparate interests. And to get it done quickly is going to take a herculean effort from all sides.

Simons has been on the board of the

Exploratorium The Exploratorium is a museum of science, technology, and arts in San Francisco, California. Characterized as "a mad scientist's penny arcade, a scientific funhouse, and an experimental laboratory all rolled into one", the participatory natur ...

and Berkeley's board of visitors. He and his family are long-time benefactors of their alma mater, Berkeley, including SERC and the Berkeley Tsinghua Joint Research Center on Energy and Climate Change. In May 2017, Simons and his spouse signed

The Giving Pledge The Giving Pledge is a campaign to encourage extremely wealthy people to contribute a majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. , the pledge has 236 signatories from 28 countries. Most of the signatories of the pledge are billionaires, a ...

, a foundation created by

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

where individuals pledge to donate the majority of their wealth. Laura Baxter-Simons is a member of the Advisory Board for the College of Letters & Science at Berkeley and of the Steering Committee for Berkeley's "Light the Way" campaign.

Personal life and family

Simons and Laura Baxter-Simons have two children. Baxter-Simons, who holds degrees in economics, German, and German literature from Berkeley, is the daughter of former California Supreme Court Justice

Marvin Baxter Marvin Ray Baxter (born January 9, 1940) is a former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California who served from January 1991 to January 5, 2015. Background Baxter was born in Fowler, California, and was raised on his family's farm. H ...

and is an attorney, having received her JD from

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. Baxter-Simons serves as the general counsel and chief compliance officer at Meritage Group.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Simons, Nat American company founders UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni American investors Jewish American philanthropists Living people 1966 births Giving Pledgers 21st-century philanthropists 21st-century American Jews