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Rebellion Research profiles Arcana CEO and Co-Founder Rich Falk Wallace.
Richard “Rich” Falk-Wallace spent his career inside some of Wall Street’s most sophisticated investment firms, including Citadel, Viking Global Investors, and Silver Point Capital. However, rather than continue managing money at a leading hedge fund, the Columbia University graduate chose a different path: building the technology that institutional investors use to manage their portfolios.
Today, Falk-Wallace is Co-Founder and CEO of Arcana, a portfolio intelligence platform used by more than 300 institutional investment firms managing over $20 trillion in combined assets.
On November 5, 2026, he will return to Columbia University as a speaker at the Mathematics of Finance (MAFN) and Department of Statistics Conference at Pulitzer Hall.
Falk-Wallace’s journey began at Columbia University, where he graduated cum laude with a degree in Economics.
After starting his career in investment banking at J.P. Morgan, he transitioned into institutional investing, holding positions at Silver Point Capital and Viking Global Investors.
He later became a Long/Short Equity Portfolio Manager at Citadel, gaining firsthand experience with the analytical demands of managing institutional investment portfolios.
At firms operating at this level, portfolio management extends far beyond selecting stocks. Managers must understand how individual positions contribute to performance, how exposures interact, and how changing market conditions affect portfolio risk.
Yet even sophisticated investment organizations face the challenge of bringing together enormous quantities of financial information.
Falk-Wallace’s decision to move from investing into entrepreneurship reflected an opportunity to address these challenges through technology.
Instead of building another hedge fund, he co-founded Arcana to develop a platform serving investment professionals across the industry.
The fundamental opportunity behind Arcana was to improve the infrastructure supporting investment decisions.
A portfolio manager might use one system to measure risk, another to evaluate performance attribution, and several additional tools to conduct research or understand changing exposures.
This fragmentation can make it difficult to develop a comprehensive picture of a portfolio.
Arcana seeks to solve that problem by combining portfolio construction, performance attribution, risk management, investment research, alpha capture, and AI-powered workflows within one institutional-grade platform.
Its central proposition is straightforward: investment teams should be able to understand what is happening in their portfolios, why it is happening, and where they should focus their attention without constantly moving between disconnected analytical systems.
Falk-Wallace’s experience at Citadel and Viking Global provided an investor’s perspective on the challenges such technology must address.
Arcana’s reported institutional adoption illustrates the scale of the opportunity.
According to the company, more than 300 investment institutions worldwide use its technology. Collectively, those firms manage more than $20 trillion in assets.
Importantly, that figure represents assets managed by Arcana’s institutional customers, not money managed directly by Arcana.
The distinction underscores the company’s business model. Rather than competing with hedge funds to generate investment returns, Arcana supplies the analytical infrastructure those firms can use to improve their investment processes.
This approach allows the company to serve a much broader institutional market, including hedge funds and traditional asset managers.
Arcana’s development also coincides with a major technological transformation in investment management.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly being incorporated into financial research, portfolio monitoring, risk analysis, and investment workflows.
For institutional investors, the opportunity extends beyond automating repetitive tasks. AI-powered systems may help analysts investigate performance drivers, identify emerging exposures, and connect information that would otherwise remain scattered across different applications.
However, financial decisions require accuracy, transparency, and rigorous risk controls. AI-generated conclusions must remain subject to validation and human judgment.
Arcana’s emphasis on integrated portfolio intelligence reflects a broader industry shift toward combining traditional quantitative analytics with more accessible, AI-enabled research capabilities.
Falk-Wallace’s appearance at Columbia University’s November 5 MAFN and Department of Statistics Conference brings his professional journey full circle.
He returns not simply as a former portfolio manager at Citadel or investor at Viking Global, but as an entrepreneur who transformed institutional investing experience into a financial technology business.
His career highlights an important evolution in quantitative finance: some of the most consequential opportunities may emerge not from launching another investment strategy, but from building the systems that help thousands of investment professionals make better decisions.
For Columbia students and financial professionals attending the conference, Falk-Wallace represents an increasingly influential category of Wall Street entrepreneur: the former investor who leaves the trading desk to build technology for the entire investment industry.
Meet Falk-Wallace at the Columbia Mathematics of Finance (MAFN) & Department of Statistics 2026 Future of Portfolio Management & AI Conference.
