Three former DeepMind researchers who developed an AI that conquered professional poker players have launched Equi Libre Technologies, a Prague-based quant firm now valued at $500 million after its Series A. The round, led by Creandum, represents the venture firm's largest single investment ever, though both parties declined to reveal the amount raised.

The founders—CEO Martin Schmid, CTO Rudolf Kadlec, and CSO Matej Moravcik—applied their poker-playing reinforcement learning expertise to financial markets through a partnership with Tower Research Capital. Their algorithms now trade billions in daily volume across the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, claiming a "perfect record of zero negative months since inception" after starting with cryptocurrency in 2025.

The team chose Prague over Silicon Valley for its talent retention advantages and lower competition for AI specialists. They previously built DeepStack while visiting PhD students at DeepMind's Edmonton office before returning to Czechia in 2022. Their $10 million seed round from Blossom Capital valued the company at $140 million, making the Series A valuation jump particularly striking.

Despite competition from trading giants like Jane Street, which claims tens of thousands of GPUs, Equi Libre aims to "get more from less" with efficient compute scaling. The startup plans to deploy one of Central and Eastern Europe's largest compute clusters while positioning itself as "a lab first, not a finance firm" focused on building unprecedented technology rather than market efficiency.