How the billionaire Bayeux Tapestry backer gets ‘impact per dollar’

The Bayeux Tapestry, which went on display in the British Museum this week, is one of the wonders of the medieval world. “Its grandiosity is overwhelming,” says Igor Tulchinsky, the hedge fund founder who gave £5 million to fund the embroidery’s temporary return to England from France, but he also sees it “a very, very old data set.”

The billionaire chairman and CEO of WorldQuant has been a pioneer in applying AI and other technologies to vast collections of data, looking to build predictive models from historical information. To his eyes, the 11th century record of the Norman conquest offers an extreme example of the value of studying history’s patterns to anticipate future developments.

“My field is about reading patterns in incomplete data, weighing probabilities, and acting intentionally under uncertainty,” he wrote earlier this year. That echoes one of the mottos by which Tulchinsky drives his 1,100-person company: “Everything is information. Information is opportunity. Opportunity is infinite.”

Tulchinsky’s backing of the exhibition will put his name in front of an estimated one million visitors and his company’s brand in front of millions more school children between now and next summer. Any benefit to WorldQuant will be “a bonus,” he says, but he is driven by efficiently maximising his “impact per dollar,” in philanthropy as in business, and a one-off artwork like the tapestry has an outsized grip on the public imagination.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson: I’m sure you get a lot of requests for philanthropic support. Why did you say yes to this one?

Igor Tulchinsky: Because it was so unique, and I thought it would be so impactful. Prior to this, I pretty much stayed in [philanthropic] areas confined to more traditional education. But the tapestry is a thousand-year-old object, and seeing a thousand-year-old object gives everybody a piece of history that really existed. A lot of history is written, rewritten, overwritten. This actually happened, and you can learn a lot by looking at it.

What impact do you hope to have by supporting the exhibit?

Once you see it, you don’t forget it. It’s going to stick in 10 million heads forever. So that’s impact number one. It’s extremely memorable, and then has an inspirational impact as well. When you see how people lived a thousand years ago, what they cared about, the story that’s depicted there, you may be inspired in many directions, especially kids. A child may get inspired to develop an interest in art, in history, in craftsmanship — hopefully not in fighting. And when adults see it, I think it inspires a sense of pride in history, and an appreciation for where we come from and what people have gone through to make our existence possible today.

Do you have a broader philosophy about how to use philanthropy for impact?

If you’re a philanthropist, you can give something to someone — an object or some money — and then object A moves from person A to person B, and it finishes there. Or you can give somebody a skill or an education, and in that case, the skill keeps producing results in that person, which affects them, affects those around them, and affects their families downstream. So the impact per dollar is likely higher in teaching people how to do different things.

You’ve said quantitative trading is about reading patterns in incomplete data, weighing probabilities, and acting intentionally under uncertainty. How do you use the study of history in your trading?

We use it like all data. We tend to focus on more narrow pieces of history, but parts of the firm, like our global macro trading [group], may look at the broader context of history. But really, everything is history, and you can even view the tapestry as a very, very old data set.

It shows that the people at that time had the same aspirations, looked at the same sky, and pretty much wanted the same things as people today do. However, the means that they had at their disposal to do anything were very different. So, at once, you get a sense of the progress that has happened, and you get a sense of similarity. Some things never change, but some things evolve and grow.

You’ve described your move to America from what is now Belarus when you were 11 as living through history. Do you see any parallels between the story that the tapestry tells and your own life?

Certainly. My parents decided to leave the Soviet Union shortly before everything collapsed. So I got to see everything that I thought was true was not true, and something else was true. The tapestry tells a similar story; a historic battle happens, and things are never the same [afterwards]. Again, something in lots of people’s lives changed in a way they couldn’t even imagine. Very suddenly, very abruptly. So I could appreciate what the people on the tapestry were going through.