Top 10 US Hedge Funds by Assets Under Management

What does 'assets under management' (AUM) mean? AUM is the total market value of all investments a fund manages on behalf of its clients. A fund reporting $100B AUM controls one hundred billion dollars in client capital.

How is this ranking determined? Funds are ordered by publicly reported or estimated AUM as of the most recent available disclosure (2024–2025). Sources include SEC Form ADV filings, fund press releases, and reporting from Bloomberg and the Financial Times.

Can everyday investors put money into these hedge funds? Generally no. US regulations restrict hedge funds to 'accredited investors'—individuals with a net worth above $1 million or annual income above $200,000—and institutional investors such as pension funds and university endowments.

Which hedge fund has the best all-time track record? Renaissance Technologies' Medallion Fund is widely regarded as the best-performing hedge fund in history, averaging over 60% annual returns before fees from 1988 to 2018. (Source: Gregory Zuckerman, *The Man Who Solved the Market*, Portfolio/Penguin, 2019.)

These ten firms aren't running the same playbook, and knowing which one each firm runs tells you more than the AUM figure does. Bridgewater and Man Group's AHL unit are macro/systematic — betting on the direction of markets and economies using models or top-down analysis, not picking individual companies. Elliott Management and Appaloosa are activist and distressed/credit investors — they take concentrated positions in specific companies or debt and try to force or capture a specific outcome. Millennium, Citadel, and Point72 run multi-manager 'pod' platforms — many independent trading teams under one roof, diversified by design rather than driven by one investment thesis. Renaissance, D.E. Shaw, and Two Sigma are the quant specialists, building trading models with mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists rather than traditional securities analysts. A single AUM ranking flattens those into one list, but the strategies — and the risks — are genuinely different.

Several of the largest names on this list are the hardest to actually invest in. Renaissance's flagship Medallion Fund has been closed to outside investors for decades and is run largely for current and former employees; most of the others require accredited- or qualified-purchaser status, high minimums, and lock-up periods that can run for years. Size and accessibility are unrelated in this industry — being large enough to make a list like this one is often a signal that a fund stopped needing outside capital a long time ago, not that it's easy to get into.