The story
Three of AQR's founding principals — Cliff Asness, Robert Krail and John Liew — met in the University of Chicago’s PhD program, where the foundation of the firm's investment philosophy took shape.
While still working on his dissertation, which focused on momentum and value, Asness joined Goldman Sachs, where he was asked to lead a new quantitative research team within the firm's asset management division. Liew and Krail joined him, and the new team applied what they learned in academia to manage both hedge-fund and long-only assets.
In 1998, Asness, David Kabiller, Krail and Liew left Goldman Sachs to establish AQR.
AQR was among the first hedge fund managers to voluntarily register at its inception with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm's first product was a hedge fund, though it soon (2000) entered into traditional portfolio management. In 2001, AQR had nearly $750 million assets under management. In 2004, AQR had $12 billion assets under management. The firm opened its first international office in Australia in 2005.
In 2009, AQR became one of the first investment managers to offer alternative mutual funds. In 2011, the firm opened an office in the UK.
After AQR's annual profit plunged 34% in 2018, the firm announced job cuts in January 2019.
As of Q3 2019, the firm had $185 billion in assets under management.
From Wikipedia’s article on AQR Capital Management, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3