Who Is Richard Craib? The Numerai Founder Who Gives Away His Hedge Fund's Data

Richard Craib is the Numerai founder and CEO who has given away his hedge fund's stock market data free since December 2015. Data scientists build models on it and stake Numeraire (NMR) behind their predictions. NMR was among CoinMarketCap's ten most-searched coins at 13:59 UTC on 29 September 2026 after a sharp rise on 28 September.

Craib built Numerai in layers, each resting on the one before. The free data came in December 2015 and the NMR token on 20 February 2017. A JPMorgan capacity deal on 26 August 2025 and a Series C on 20 November 2025 top the stack.

Who Is Richard Craib?

Richard Craib studied pure mathematics at Cornell and built a machine-learning global equity fund at Prudential's M&G before he started Numerai.

Numerai's NumerCon 2026 post lists him as Founder and CEO, and he wrote its capacity and funding announcements himself.

Cornell Financial Engineering Manhattan listed him as a speaker at its 2022 Future of Finance conference.

How Did Richard Craib Build Numerai?

Step 1: A Company and a Free Dataset, 2015

The 2022 conference speaker profile says Craib founded Numerai in San Francisco in October 2015 to build a hedge fund where data scientists around the world predict equity returns. The website went live two months later. Numerai's Master Plan post of 12 October 2017 describes that December 2015 launch as a one-page site that looked like a Kaggle data science competition. The core idea was to give away all of the fund's data for free and let anyone train machine-learning models on it and send predictions back. Numerai paid its data scientists in bitcoin, which the post says confused most people at the time. Its homepage says Numerai obfuscates the data so it can hand it out free.

Step 2: Numeraire, 20 February 2017

Numerai's launch post says that on 20 February 2017 it issued 1,000,000 Numeraire tokens to its 12,000 existing data scientists based on their past results and held no crowdsale.

Staking gave the token its job, since a data scientist stakes NMR on a set of predictions and earns money if they hold up on live data. The post says a stake on poor predictions gets "permanently destroyed". That's what it means to burn crypto, and it put a price on overfitting.

By 12 October 2017 the Master Plan counted 30,000 data scientists on Numerai. It set out four steps, opening with "Monopolize intelligence" and closing with "Decentralize the monopoly".

Step 3: NMR 2.0 and the Fund, 2019

The NMR 2.0 post of 8 July 2019 records Numerai giving up control of its token. Numerai could no longer control or upgrade the contract, minting ended and the maximum supply fell from 21 million to 11 million to reduce dilution. The footnotes to Numerai's 2025 JPMorgan post count the fund's record from 1 September 2019, eight weeks after the token went independent. Craib framed the two years of central control as a choice, "We've taken a contrarian path and prioritized the usefulness of our token above its initial decentralization."

Step 4: A Third Job for NMR, 2024

On 17 June 2024 Numerai launched Numerai Crypto, a tournament where data scientists rank the future returns of liquid tokens and can stake NMR on their calls. Numerai called it the third use case for NMR, after the main stock tournament and Signals, a tournament for data scientists who bring their own data.

Step 5: JPMorgan and the Series C, 2025

Craib's post of 26 August 2025 said JPMorgan Asset Management had invested in Numerai's hedge fund and secured capacity in it. He called the deal "the biggest milestone yet" for Numerai. The same post opens with his case for the company, "The point of Numerai has always been to create a hedge fund for the AI age."

His Series C post of 20 November 2025 valued Numerai at five times its 2023 level in a round led by university endowments. Union Square Ventures, Shine Capital and Paul Tudor Jones took part as existing investors. "Numerai has never grown so fast," he wrote in the same post.

Step 6: Sigil, Singularity and Atomic Staking, 2026

Numerai's NumerCon post of 17 February 2026 records Numerai One's new name, Numerai Sigil. The same event introduced Numerai Singularity, a fund that pairs global equity beta with Numerai's uncorrelated alpha. Craib put the Sigil name down to age, "Numerai One has become mature and so we want to consecrate that with a name change to Numerai Sigil."

NumerCon also announced Atomic Blockchain Staking, which lets contributors bring their own wallet and stake NMR or USDC. If you're new to the idea, our explainer on how crypto staking works covers the basic mechanics. Every burn still happens in NMR, because a burned USDC stake gets swapped for NMR on the open market and destroyed on-chain.

Numerai's monthly update of 1 September 2026 says the main tournament began using atomic staking for rounds starting on or after 28 August 2026.

The Numbers Behind Numerai

Every row in that table dates a layer of the stack, and none of them is an NMR price. The Numerai hedge fund and the token meet at the stake, because NMR 2.0 ended minting on 8 July 2019 and every lost stake shrinks the supply for good. Our Numeraire (NMR) explainer walks through the token's role in the tournament. The 2.75 Sharpe ratio belongs to Numerai One, the fund renamed Numerai Sigil in February 2026, and the JPMorgan post states it net of fees.

Why Richard Craib's Story Matters Beyond Numerai

For founders: The Master Plan lists the free data, the bitcoin payouts and the token as ideas that each "seemed like a distraction" at the time. In February 2026 the NumerCon post called those choices deliberate and said they "accumulated into a single architecture". Craib's stack worked because each layer gave the next one something to stand on.

For investors: Money reaches Craib's work through different doors. The JPMorgan deal went into the fund and the Series C went into the company, while NMR is the token data scientists stake in the tournament. If the fund's method is new to you, our beginner guide to quantitative trading explains how funds like it turn data into trades.

For traders: NMR's sharp rise on 28 September 2026 came with no Numerai announcement behind it. The blog's RSS feed, read on 29 September, carries nothing dated after 1 September. Numerai's own record ties the token to stakes and burns, so the monthly posts that report tournament changes are where you'd look for a cause.

What Traders Should Watch

The staking switch: The main tournament has run on Atomic Blockchain Staking for rounds from 28 August 2026. NumerCon set a lower payout factor for USDC stakes than for NMR stakes, which Numerai says will push contributors toward NMR staking over time.

The Signals dataset: The 1 September monthly says Signals rounds starting on or after 25 September 2026 use the v3 "Supernova" dataset, which brings a new target and simpler scoring.

Numerai Risk: NumerCon announced a tournament for machine-learned predictions of residual volatility, set for 2026. The 1 September monthly gives no launch date for it, and a launch would add a new layer to the stack.

The next monthly: Numerai has posted a monthly update in the first week of each month from May to September 2026. If you hold NMR, an October update would be the first place the company could address the 28 September rise.

How to Trade the Trends Craib Represents

Via crypto: NMR isn't available on Phemex, where its NMR / USDT perpetual and its spot pair are both delisted. The trend Craib represents is machine learning paid in crypto, and our guide to decentralized AI names Bittensor among the projects building it. Bittensor's token has a live TAO / USDT perpetual at up to 50x leverage on Phemex's product list of 29 September 2026.

Via TradFi perpetuals: Numerai's fund trades global equities market neutral, and Numerai Singularity adds equity beta to that alpha. Phemex's NAS100 / USDT and QQQ / USDT perpetuals, both listed at up to 10x leverage, let you take index exposure to US stocks from the same account.

Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of hedge fund does Numerai run?

Numerai's homepage describes a quantitative global equity market neutral hedge fund designed for institutional investors, though it says some accredited individuals may qualify.

Where is Numerai based?

Craib's Series C post said Numerai was moving into a larger San Francisco headquarters and would open an office in New York City.

Who wrote the Numeraire white paper?

Richard Craib wrote it with Geoffrey Bradway, Xander Dunn and Joey Krug, and Numerai's launch post credits the smart contract to Alex Mingoia and Joey Krug.

Does Numerai trade crypto?

The post that launched Numerai Crypto says the company does not trade cryptocurrencies and that its hedge funds have no relation to the Crypto tournament.

What can traders learn from Richard Craib?

Read a token by the job it does before you read its chart, since Numerai's Master Plan called NMR "a token to access the staking tournament on Numerai".

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.