How Renee Yao Is Using AI to Rethink Investing

0:00Hey, I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you'd like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to Mission Matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, today I have Renee Yao on the line, and she is founder and CIO over at Neo IV Capital. And this episode is part of our eye connections. My Amy series where we bring you the best of those that attended and participated in eye connections that took place over in Miami. Renee, welcome to the show. Well, thank you Adam. It's a pleasure to join the show. All right, so we got a lot to talk about today. So I definitely want to get into Neo IV Capital and what your firm is doing and also really how AI plays a role in this and how you're using it and investing. But before we get into that and also your firm, I want to start with eye connections. So I understand you attended. I know Steven, who also works with you, attended, like, was this your first time? Have you been in the past?

1:00Like maybe give us a little bit of the background. Yeah, sure. So this is actually my first time attending eye connections. My first time attending the event was back in 2017 when I first launched my own firm. Oh, wow. So you're a veteran, just so you know Renee, this is my first time going. So I was, this is one of these things where I always hear about these conferences and like, yeah, I mean, you got to come cover, you got to come do this. And I'm like, well, and then enough people tell me and I'm like, okay, I'm going. Let me see what's going on. So this isn't so you're a veteran. It's good to have you on the show to pick your brain. So please continue. I just wanted to say so you're a veteran. That's wonderful. No problem. I know Adam. Yeah. It used to be called eye connection and then used to be at the hotel front and blue. But now as the events gathering more interest, more and more people want to attend it. So now they move into the convention center. So we attend last year with my colleagues, Stephen Greenblatt had a BD and we're attending this year as well. And so you've been there kind of like, I know it's grown and what keeps you coming back?

2:01There's a lot of different ways you can spend your time. There's a lot of different ways to spend time, effort, marketing, dollars, connection opportunities. What keeps you coming back? What makes this so special? Oh, that's a good question. So I think the eye connection provides a good opportunity to build a connection between the investor and the manager. So that was the original goal of setting up the conference. But at the same time, you can meet with your colleagues. You can see what is the latest trend in the market, what people are carrying, like gifts like a general kind of temperature of what is going on in the market. And you've seen like the facilitation of like the meetings and everything else. Can you talk about the ease and like the convenience of that side of things? Because that's one of the things I hear about all the time and like the quality of meetings and less than that and they make it super easy, like the platform just gets better and better every year. Can you talk a little bit about that? Oh, yeah, sure. So I think right now they rely on this automatic optimization process to assign meetings

3:02between manager and investors. It's actually not a very simple and straightforward problem because you're dealing with multiple managers. Yeah. Multiple meetings and then multiple investors. So it's actually a very sophisticated organization problem. So now I'm glad to see they build a sophisticated tool to be able to assign on. So each investor and manager can have their schedule assigned kind of before, like a one week before the meeting starts. Yeah. I love it. I saw that and I was like, this is it. I like to use the word sophisticated because in China, coordinate that many people is literally, there's a lot of people attending and that and also nobody wants to waste their time, right? So it has to work. So I'm glad you gave me some of the inside there. Yeah, I want to switch it up a bit here and change the topic slightly. Let's get into neo-IV capital. Maybe start with telling us a little bit more about the firm. Yeah, sure. So neo-IV is a conference has found 10 years ago, back in 2016, we are a firm specializing

4:03at efficient intelligence and in fact, as far as I know, we are one of the only women on the machine learning AI has found in the entire industry. And you said this is, did I hear that right 10 years ago, roughly? Yes. The firm was set up in 2015, but we started tweeting in 2016. Yeah. So this is where we just celebrate our 10 years trading 10 years anniversary this June. Congratulations. That's amazing. And if you think about it, I know it sounds kind of funny because it's not that long in a time span, but when we're talking about something like AI or trading 10 years is a lifetime, it may not be a sincerity. So you were pretty early on, I'm going in that direction, am I off on that or would you be agreeing or do you think I'm wrong? Yes, you are absolutely correct. And we are considered one of the pioneers in researching the AI space. How does that fuel what you're doing today?

5:04You're invested. I don't want to use the word, does it give you a head start or an edge or things like that? But I'm just curious. How does that fuel what you're doing today? Yes. Absolutely. 10 years ago when I first came out, I was trying to explain why I'm trying to apply AI, this mode and technology in the financial market, it was pre-deformed concept. I was going to say people were probably looking at you, you're crazy. What is this? You're going to put AI out. You're going to do what? Now you're the most popular. I feel like, go ahead, continue, but I'm just trying to picture what that was 10 years ago. Yes, exactly. So I spent a lot of time, like the falling time of the years trying to explain to people what is AI, why AI is powerful. So what is? Do you laugh now? Do you got to laugh at that now, all the people you had to educate in the beginning now, right? It's a learning process for myself and for everyone, every single one of us, right? It's a learning process. And then like the recent years, while thanks to tech to BT, I don't need to focus on why

6:07AI is powerful. But then the focus shift to, you know, why you are curious, like what makes your AI differentiate it? How does that contribute to an investment problem? That's interesting. Yeah. So if you think about the difference between traditional machine learning versus modern AI, it's kind of like comparing IBM deep blue versus Google's AlphaGo. So deep blue is the logo that designed and released by IBM in the 1990s, which they use that to beat the Russian test championship. And AlphaGo is the logo designed and released by Google back in 2016, which they use that to beat the Go championship. Now on the top, you might feel one of those two looks very similar, right? But in my mind, the deep blue is a classic traditional machine learning logo, which means you want to return it, you have to feed it with a lot of construct data. You have to assume history, repeat itself. And so you're trying to find some patterns in the construct data and hopefully the same

7:09pattern will still hold in the future. And once you find yourself in the past 10 years data, sort of a, say, momentum on the modern pattern, it's a static model, right? It won't spontaneously change into a different model. Right. So that's the learning methodology of a traditional machine learning logo. Now, speaking of AlphaGo, it has a different learning methodology. That's why it's called modern AI. First of all, the logo is not just learning from construct data, it's learning from this rule-based learning process, just like how we humans learn things. So it would lie on leading indicator versus construct data lacking information. And second, the logo is learning in real time, just like we do. If you think about how we learn math, right, when you were, when we were back in school, our math teacher showed us, OK, 1 plus 1 equals 2, 1 plus 2, 3. You don't need the math teacher to explore every single example to figure out 2 plus 3 equals 5, right? Because we have this, like, the enforcement learning methodology, we have this self-learning

8:10ability. And that's kind of what why we call AlphaGo a modern AI, because it has something similar with what we call reinforcement learning. So that's a difference between a traditional machine learning, traditional quantum versus modern AI. And is this evolved? I'm curious. Like, why do you feel that this is, or do you feel, I should say, do you feel that AI and kind of go in this direction that this kind of is the future of investing or like, what are your thoughts on that? Absolutely. Yeah. It's like, you can imagine what we're trying to do is trying to apply AI in the financial market, like building a financial burden on the creativity, right? Now, if you have the choice between, you know, theory, Alexa, and creativity, which I'll go, you will go to, right? Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't mean I have a opinion on like, Alexa or like, Sierra, and yeah, I use a great partner, but it's just like, you're not in my strategy, it's different from touch and key. Right? So I'm curious. We're heading into, I mean, we're going to blink, and it'll be cute too, for everybody

9:13just so everybody understands when we're recording this, just for a quick little time stamp we're recording this March 12, 2026. So René, I'm curious on your end, going into this next quarter and going into Q2 of 2026, like, what kind of conversations are you having in your firm? Like, what's on your mind right now when it comes to investing in and how you're allocating capital? That's a good question. I know that's a big one. I know. Yeah. So I'm sure it's a lot going on with AI right now, right? The AI and 20 process, the interpretation, there's a lot of debate. So we spend a lot of time researching the latest research area using AI space, but at the same time, we're also trying to see what is the value of AI to the financial product, right? Because you cannot claim you're using AI, but then you'll return a like, 30, 40, 50% correlated with everybody else, what's the value of that? So we've been spending a lot of time trying to see how to use AI in a way that we can

10:18deliver non-correlated returns to our investors. Great. René, this has been a lot of fun having you on the show today. Like, I really enjoyed our conversation. I really enjoyed learning more about, about, you know, IV capital. Last, last question here, if people want to follow up, they want to learn more, they want to connect with your team. How do they do that? They are most welcome to visit our website, which is www.newivcapital.com. Then there you will see we put up some examples, we put up some productions about us, and then happy, then they can also send the email to our website. So how do you just stay in touch with the audience? Wonderful. Everybody listening to, so you know, we'll definitely put some links in the show notes, so you can just click on the links and head right on over and connect with René and her team. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven't done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show, yes, you heard me right, daily, each and every day, bringing you

11:20new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you long the way in your journey as well. So hit that subscribe or follow button and René, thanks again so much for coming on the show and congrats again on the big 10 years. So congrats. Thank you Adam, and thank you so much for having me on the show. It's been a great pleasure.