Citadel founder Ken Griffin says AI is coming for white-collar jobs, but not at his firms

Citadel founder Ken Griffin said on Tuesday that artificial intelligence will make some once-stable and well-paid white-collar jobs obsolete, using translators as an example, according to Business Insider. Speaking at a Citadel Securities conference in New York, Griffin, who runs the $77 billion hedge fund Citadel and market maker Citadel Securities, said the US should begin embracing reskilling to help workers at risk of job loss. "We need it in a profound way," he said. "There's talk about it, but there's no action on that front."

Griffin said AI will not displace the core function of his own firms. Despite what he described as the "tremendous" advancement of AI models, he argued that Citadel's business of generating market-beating returns remains in the domain of people. "I would argue that the core business is research," he said, adding that the edge needed to outperform other market participants comes from "the creativity, the ingenuity, the analysis of the people on our team who conduct fundamental research."

AI nonetheless plays a role at Citadel. At the end of last year, each stock picker received an AI assistant "to further accelerate their research process," though Griffin warned at the time against "offloading human judgment." He said on Tuesday that trading processes have been sped up by new technology, freeing investment staff to spend more time on research.

As a business owner, Griffin said AI is frightening because "you're seeing your competitive moats being filled in by bulldozers," forcing established companies to innovate faster than ever. He nonetheless predicted a "golden age" for entrepreneurs as barriers to starting a small business fall, and said he has become more optimistic about AI overall. "It is hard on people, but ultimately our lives are better," he said, adding, "There's no doubt that you or I would rather live right here in 2026 than in 1926."