WorldQuant's International Quant Championship Earns Guinness World Records™ Title for Largest Finance Competition

Global Finals brought together finalists from 13 countries, selected from 156,000 registrants, with Victor Ayebameru of Nigeria named champion

OLD GREENWICH, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--WorldQuant, a global quantitative asset management firm, has been awarded a Guinness World Records™ title for the Largest Finance Competition for its International Quant Championship (IQC).

The IQC is WorldQuant’s flagship global competition, in which university students build alphas¹ on WorldQuant BRAIN, a simulation platform that provides tools, data and educational resources for aspiring quants. With an incredible total of 73,496 participants, from an initial pool of 156,000 registrants, the competition culminated in the global finals on October 7, 2026, in Singapore.

"For decades, a career in quantitative finance depended on where you studied and who you knew," said Igor Tulchinsky, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of WorldQuant. "But the next great quant is as likely to be in Nairobi or Seoul as in New York or London. WorldQuant's International Quant Championship removes that filter at scale. This year, a record number of people from 167 countries competed on one thing alone: the quality of their ideas."

This year’s growth was supported by WorldQuant BRAIN’s global community of approximately 20,000 consultants, who helped raise awareness of the IQC across their personal networks helping to drive increased participation. Registrations for the IQC have nearly doubled each year since 2024, growing from around 38,000 to 80,000 to 156,000 in 2026. This year also saw a notable increase in solo competitors, including the Global Champion, which WorldQuant believes may reflect AI-enabled workflows helping more individuals take part in quantitative research.

"This recognition reflects what the International Quant Championship has become: a global community of the world's most promising quantitative minds," said Nitish Maini, Chief Strategy Officer at WorldQuant. "What began as an effort to widen access to quantitative research now connects participants with one another and with careers at WorldQuant and beyond. The larger that community grows, the more opportunity it creates for the exceptional people within it."

For more information about the IQC and WorldQuant BRAIN, please visit https://www.worldquant.com/brain/.

¹ WorldQuant defines "alphas" as mathematical models that seek to predict the future price movements of various financial instruments.

About WorldQuant

WorldQuant is a global quantitative asset management firm. Founded in 2007 by Igor Tulchinsky with the belief that talent is global, but opportunity is not, WorldQuant has more than 1,100 employees spread among 28 global offices. WorldQuant seeks to get to the future faster, guided by the principle that there are an infinite number of insights to discover. The firm develops and deploys investment strategies across a variety of asset classes in global markets.