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UK-based market maker XTX has reported a 54 per cent rise in profits in 2024, driven by positive investor sentiment about the economy and enthusiasm about generative AI.
Filings last week to UK regulators and a document seen by the Financial Times show that the company’s profits after tax rose to £1.3bn, from £835mn the previous year, while revenues were up 36 per cent to £2.7bn.
XTX, which was founded in London a decade ago, has become one of Britain’s most profitable private businesses, making co-founder Alex Gerko, who owns about three-quarters of the company, one of the UK’s richest people.
In March, its XTX Markets Technologies subsidiary paid a dividend of £404mn to its holding company, which is controlled by Gerko. XTX declined to comment on the filings.
The group has exploited the wave of innovation that has swept through markets since the 2008 financial crisis, allowing XTX and rivals like Citadel Securities, Virtu Financial and Tower Research to grab large chunks of the trading business that had historically been done through big banks.
XTX uses vast amounts of computing power to detect anomalies and patterns in prices across currency, debt, equity, commodity and crypto markets. It estimates that it handles around $250bn of trading volume a day on global markets.
It owns more than 25,000 AI chips, mainly Nvidia chips, making it one of the chipmaker’s biggest corporate customers.
XTX said in January it would invest €1bn on its own data centre in Finland after having outgrown leasing options. The first building at the centre, which will be operational from 2026, will manage computing power of 22.5MW.
Nordic countries have become popular locations for data centres because their cheap electricity and climate mean it costs less and takes less power to keep servers cool. Last year Google said it was building a 240MW data centre in Norway.
