Hedge funds seek an edge by using AI's speed
AIMA's survey of $788bn in hedge fund assets found 95% AI adoption and under 5% using it for portfolio optimization. That gap is not a maturity curve; it is a fiduciary ceiling with no infrastructure underneath it. Sand Grove's Caplan says the judgment layer above AI is permanent even in the long run, and Anaconda and Pharo confirm the pattern independently: AI handles documents and back office, stops at security selection. What's gating deployment isn't model quality; it's the absence of a scoring layer that lets a CRO sign off on broader scope without carrying personal liability for the output. The same ceiling shows up in Anthropic's interpretability work: once cognition is auditable, alignment posture becomes a measurable input rather than a vendor claim, and procurement frameworks aren't built for either. The next decade of enterprise AI value capture sits in whoever builds that infrastructure, not in whoever ships the next model.