Maya Fund: A Bodybuilder's Brainy Hedge Fund

Sonia Schulenburg is trying to prove that artificial intelligence can outdo the human kind when it comes to picking stocks. Born and educated in Mexico City, she moved to Edinburgh, where she competed as a bodybuilder while earning a doctorate in artificial intelligence. Her research helped her launch a computer-driven investment fund that instantly adapts to changing market conditions. Schulenburg's firm, Level E Capital, which she runs from Edinburgh's Georgian New Town, has attracted $40 million from investors including Peter Burt, Bank of Scotland's former chief executive officer, and Baillie Gifford, which invests money for seven of the world's 15 largest pension funds. While many funds use computer formulas to trade, "this is definitely different because it's dynamic," says Michael MacPhee, a partner at Baillie Gifford, which invested $15 million last year with Schulenburg. "This thing actually adapts, it's intelligent."

Guided by a computer server that sits in a six-foot-high air-cooled cabinet, Schulenburg's Maya Fund makes as many as 1,000 trades a day, focusing on companies in the FTSE 100 and Standard & Poor's 500-stock indexes. It can both buy stocks and sell them short, betting they will fall. Unlike typical algorithm-based funds, it uses artificial intelligence to change its buy and sell criteria as it digests new market data "on the fly," says Schulenburg, 44, who has three sons. "My children say, 'Mummy makes robots, the robots live in the computer, and the computer trades stocks.' "